


The Wreckage of Stars

by QuickYoke



Series: The Wonder Years of the Greatest Generation [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angie is still a brilliant engineer, Angst, Cold War, Espionage, F/F, and Peggy is still a grumpy officer...err...Director
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-16 22:16:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3504719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickYoke/pseuds/QuickYoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life after the war was going pretty well, until Angie decided to stick her big nose in places where she didn't belong. Then it all went downhill from there. A direct sequel to 'The Scheme of Things.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. M'aidez

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to 'The Scheme of Things.' I highly recommend you go read that before continuing with this.  
> Also: y'all remember how fluffy 'The Scheme of Things' was? Yeah. Not so anymore.

_“The wreckage of stars – I built a world from this wreckage.”_

_– Friederich Nietzsche, ‘The Beacon: Dionysian Dithyrambs’_

 

* * *

 

On a scale from bad to pretty terrible, this was easily the worst situation Angie had ever gotten herself into. Hands down. No competition. Worse than that time she almost got herself killed by Costello’s thugs by standing up for her fool cousin back in ’37. Worse even than that time she and Peggy barely managed to fly away in a B-24 Liberator from Nazi-occupied Italy back in ’44. Way worse.

God forgive her. But she was a terrible coward.

Black and silver flecks swam across her vision. Everything below her waist was a blur of sharp pain, like a slow fire dragged through her bones. Once upon a time she would’ve said that the worst pain she could remember in her life was breaking her arm when she took a tumble from her bicycle onto the pavement outside her house in Brooklyn as a girl.

What a laugh.

And she did start laughing then, a dry, heaving laugh that rattled in her lungs. It quickly dissolved into whimpers and desperate tears when a bloody, gristle-toothed 300mm hacksaw clattered to the ground beside her. She used to like her hacksaw. She had fond memories of working a new piece of metal -- the thrill of a fresh project hot and appealing as a pastry -- and even fond memories of threatening Paul Harris with one back at Farnborough, thieving bastard that he was. Now she wasn’t sure could ever touch one again without being physically ill.

Not for the first time she wished she were safely back at RAE Farnborough. Tinkering with planes. Bantering easily with Stan. Swinging her legs from the high rafters with Peggy by her side.

Oh, god. Peggy.

What she wouldn’t give to see Peggy burst through the cell door right now.

Angie had never been a praying kind of girl. Not really. Certainly not much for one raised in a devout Italian Catholic family. But, boy, she was praying good and hard now.

A chair dropped on four legs in front of her, and she near jumped out of her skin with a sob. A man sank down into it, back straight. He was carefully dressed, even as he wiped Angie’s blood from his hands with a rag, his shirtsleeves carefully rolled back above his elbows. He had a broad, well-mannered face beneath a receding hairline. When he finished cleaning his hands – blood still caked beneath his manicured fingernails – he tossed the dirty rag aside. Angie trembled beneath his gaze, refusing to look at him, unable to look at him.

Ivan Alexandrovich Serov. Deputy Commissar of the NKVD.

Angie had only been in this cell less than a week, and she couldn’t think of anyone more terrifying. Now he had only to glance at her, and gently rub a lock of her hair between his fingers, and she would have told him anything. For as long as she could she resisted, bound hand and foot with old piano wire to this chair. Until yesterday he threatened to saw off her fingers too, and she broke.

She needed those. She couldn’t live without those.

God, she was a coward. God forgive her. God forgive her. God forgive –

Ivan reached into his pocket, withdrawing a crisp cigarette, and stuck it between his teeth. From the shadows a woman loomed, blonde hair clapped back into a tight bun at the base of her neck like a roll of golden hay after harvest. She held out a silvery lighter and clicked a flame to life, and Ivan lit his cigarette with a puff.

She went by many names, some of which Angie knew. Still Angie doubted she knew even half of them. Ida Emke. Dorothy Underwood. Yelena Belova.

For the duration of the sessions, Yelena – for that was how Angie always thought of her now: stern, chilly, mute Yelena – would stand at the back of the room by the heavy iron door. An impassive, immovable audience. When she had first entered the tiny concrete cell, Angie was sure that this was to be the face of her torturer. As it turned out, Ivan enjoyed conducting his own torture sessions. High-ranking officer or not, the man had a gift for these things. He enjoyed getting his hands dirty, and keeping his clothes immaculate.

They didn’t call him the Butcher of Ukraine for nothing.

“You said you were ready to talk,” Ivan began, and Angie flinched at the sound of his voice. He exhaled, and plumes of smoke billowed from his nostrils, “So, _Anzhelochka_ _._ Talk.”

Talk? She would do more than that. For Ivan Serov, she would sing.

God forgive her.


	2. Wheel of Fortune

“The story starts like most stories, really: I should’ve listened to Peggy.”

Ivan studied her, legs neatly crossed at the knee, cigarette pinched between his fingers, “Peggy?” he asked, cocking his head.

Angie licked her dry, cracked lips, and rasped, “Margaret Carter.”

At that Ivan’s gaze sharpened, and Angie fought back a shiver, “You work for SHIELD?”

He flicked his cigarette, and a fleck of ash floated lazily to the floor. Angie watched it with a special kind of fear, rubbing her wrists and forearms together where small circular burns peppered the skin. The piano wire dug into her, and a warm trickle of blood ran down the back of her hand, slicking the scabs there.

“Well, technically I’m employed by the US Air Force. And before that I worked on experimental aircraft at England’s RAE Farnborough. Peggy and I are,” and here Angie paused, “ _particular_ friends.”

All true. She just wasn’t about to tell him in what particular.

He raised the cigarette to his lips and took a long drag, "Continue, then. Tell me about Margaret Carter."

Angie didn't like the way he said her name. The way it clicked on his tongue, in the back of his throat like a hard-boiled sweetmeat. 

"And remember,  _Anzhelochka_. Don't lie," his dark eyes burned like small dying embers through the dim light of the cell, "If you lie, I'll know."

 

* * *

 

The year was 1952, and Angie couldn’t complain about anything in life. She was back in New York near her family. She and Peggy were living together in one of Howard Stark’s ‘quaint’ properties – given to Peggy as Director of Alphabet Soup Ltd. And the Suffolk County Air Force Base was once again a military operation.

Not that Angie had any problem with the Air Base being civilian. It was just that civilian operations tended to be so darn boring. Just the same old humdrum routine repairs on the same old machines. If she was lucky, they’d get in a Convair instead of the usual Boeing or Lockheed Super Constellation.

And don’t even get her started on the Cessnas. If she never had to see another Cessna in her whole life, she’d die a happy woman.

That first day they brought in a fleet of Corsair F4U-5s to the Air Base, Angie had Handel’s ‘Hallelujah’ on repeat in her head. Better yet, the guys at the Air Base weren’t all that bad, either. They let her have three Corsairs to tinker with. _Three_. All to herself. Paradise, or what?

“Go crazy,” her supervisor, Rodriguez, had told her. When Angie tried throwing her arms around him in a hug, he’d batted her away and grumbled something in Spanish.

Not that she was desperate for a challenge or nothing. She was just…well, ok. She was pretty thirsty for a change in pace. Can you blame a girl? Going from cutting edge, experimental, military grade aircraft to battered up Boeings wasn’t easy. Besides, she never got to work on Corsairs before. They were Pacific front planes. And now that there was all this trouble with Korea, Uncle Sam needed his Corsairs in tip-top shape.

One thing was for sure – the US government had hired the right gal for the job.

While she was fiddling around with the idea of extra armour, a relocation of the oil coolers, and a simplification of the supercharger – all to maximise low-altitude operation – Angie wasn’t all that surprised when a few of her colleagues wandered up with honest, curious expressions. In direct contrast to the folks at RAE Farnborough, her co-workers at the Suffolk County Air Base were actually rather friendly.

The first time she showed up with her typical enthusiasm and bright pink accessories, the boys had given her a number of sidelong glances. A bit inelegant, if you asked her, but guys usually were about these sorts of things. They weren’t outwardly mean, but they did avoid her like their overalls would turn pink if they got too close.

Then Peggy and Chester Philips showed up, wearing their full-kit dress uniforms – something about a media presentation down in DC later that day? Who knows. Anyway, the point was that the boys were real impressed by all the shiny baubles. They were especially impressed and horrified by the way Angie ignored the baubles, and spoke to the pair a mile a minute like they were old friends.

After that things were all fine and dandy. Slowly the boys learned that they could approach Angie without getting consumption, and sometimes she’d even give them helpful tips on their latest projects if they asked her nicely. She’d never actually be ‘one of the guys’ as it were, but it sure was a nice change from the community at Farnborough.

Excepting Stan, that was. He still wrote letters near every month. Got married last year too. Even invited Angie to the wedding in England, which she and Peggy were only too happy to attend. Luckily Peggy had been out that way for one of her ‘business trips’ at the time, so it worked out perfectly.

Like a true glutton for punishment, Peggy was also enjoying her job as Director. She worked long gruelling hours in the vaguely named ‘Office’ but at night she’d shed her clothes, crawl into bed, and wrap herself around Angie like a cheap suit. Some days she came home early, and Angie would drag her out for a nice meal and demand they go dancing. Other days, she wouldn’t come home at all, off on some trip to Europe or God only knows where for Top Secret meetings with government officials. She was always good about telling Angie when those days would be, though.

Today was one such a day. Angie had the Saturday off, and was spending it repairing the kitchen plumbing. Peggy wasn’t supposed to be back until Sunday, so needless to say Angie was surprised when she heard the front door open and close. She’d had to train Peggy to make more noise since living together, lest she die from a heart attack.

Kay Star blared over the radio while she worked. Angie wasn’t too fussy about her taste in music. So long as it was high-ranking in the charts, she would probably like listening to it. But it meant that when Peggy spoke from across the vast apartment, it just sounded like a series of British mumbles.

“Can’t hear you, hun!” Angie shouted, still half submerged in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink, clanging around the pipes.

“What room are you in?” Peggy called.

“Kitchen!”

Even after years of training Peggy to make noise, she still moved silently, her heels eerily lacking the click over hardwood and tile. When she rounded the corner into the kitchen she was already ranting, “I’ve had the most ghastly trip.”

“They bump you down from business class again, and you got airsick?” Angie asked, legs sprawled across the tile floor, flat on her back. She grunted as she loosened a fitting.

“Thank God, no.” Peggy sighed, dropping her bag on the counter and shrugging off her coat, “NATO’s military committee finally accepted the Long Term Defence Plan, but they’re so damn stubborn about their maritime exercises.”

“You think that’s bad,” Angie shifted so that she could reach the next fitting, “You should see what I’m dealing with down here. All these pipes are copper. _Copper._ Can you believe it? This is the sort of extravagance that brought down Rome, I tell ya!”

“Oh? This demands closer inspection,” Peggy replied dryly. Then she got down on her hands and knees – still in her nice clothes from the North Atlantic Council and everything – and crawled beneath the sink. Yanking Angie in for a hard kiss, Peggy pressed herself up against her, never mind the grime and old mucky water.

“I missed you,” she murmured between wandering hands and the maze of leaky pipes.

“Missed you too,” Angie smiled and drew back with a quick peck to Peggy’s nose, “Now, go on and tell me all about your crappy week in exotic Lisbon, while I finish up here.”

Peggy groaned against Angie’s neck, fingertips toying with the skin of Angie’s waist, revealed by her hiked up shirt, “Can’t the plumbing wait?”

“Ten minutes, then I’m all yours for the rest of the weekend. I promise.”

With a huff Peggy pulled herself out from under the sink, “You know, there are contractors who can do that for you.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”


	3. Le Gigot

 

_Le Gigot - Grande Armée slang, meaning ‘a leg’ as in ‘a leg of lamb’ but actually referring to a botched amputation._

 

* * *

 

The extent to which Angie personally knew Peggy’s co-workers and underlings at Alphabet Soup Ltd was slim to none, to say the very least. Howard Stark and Chester Philips to name a few. Oh, and that tall British fellow with the shoulders who waited on Stark, and bickered good-naturedly with Peggy, and who reminded Angie of Stan in a visceral way. That was about it.

And she was fine with that. In fact she thought it was probably for the best. The more distance between Peggy’s work and Angie, the better.

Until she met Daniel Sousa. That’s when everything started going downhill.

Oh, don’t get her wrong. Sousa was a wonderful guy. A real sincere, diligent type. Loyal too. Peggy couldn’t have hoped for a better person to act as her support at work. He just also happened to be the marker for which Angie based all of her current woes.

Besides it was Angie’s fault really. Not that she would ever admit that.

(Given her current circumstances she might, in fact, admit that.)

It all happened one evening when Angie returned from work. Peggy was in DC for the evening, and Angie was looking forward to the cold leftover lasagne waiting for her in the fridge, and the bottle of cabernet sauvignon in the cellar. When she’d first moved into the building, it had given her such a thrill to punch that presidential suite button in the elevator and count all the floors as it sped up to the top. These days, though, she just sighed and fiddled with the strap of her bag, and dreamed of lasagne and wine and a hot bath.

The elevator doors began to slide shut when she spied a tidily dressed gentleman push through the revolving glass doors at the front of the building. Good Samaritan that she was, Angie held the elevator door. For her efforts she received a grateful smile as he limped across the shining polished creamy marble lobby, and joined her in the elevator.

“Thanks,” he said, and the elevator doors finally closed.

“No problem. What floor?” she held her hand over the panel.

He glanced over and said, somewhat surprised, “You’ve already hit it, actually.”

Her eyebrows climbed, and the elevator lurched into motion. The ride up was probably one of the most quiet and awkward elevator rides of Angie’s life. Both of them glanced curiously at one another, then pretended they hadn’t. And all the while soft cheery music played through hidden speakers.

Nothing was said until they reached the top and both began walking towards the front door of Peggy and Angie’s penthouse apartment. At which point he opened his mouth, when perhaps it would’ve been in his best interests to remain silent.

“So, are you the cook or something?”

Angie stared at him, “Am I – what?”

“I just assumed –” he shrugged as he shambled along on his crutch, keeping pace, “I mean, you’re pulling keys out, so –”

She was indeed pulling keys from her bag. Dangling them from her finger, she replied, “That’s because I live here.”

“Oh. _Oh._ I’m so sorry,” he looked it too, brows all scrunched up beneath his dark combed hair, “It’s just – Director Carter never mentioned a roommate.”

Of course she hadn’t.

They’d reached the door, and Angie started to unlock it, “Peggy is a,” she rolled her eyes, “very private person. I’m not all that surprised.”

Which was true. Surprised? Nah. Put out? A bit.

It’s not like she wanted their relationship trumpeted from every rooftop, but it sure would’ve been nice to know that Peggy spoke fondly if not of her exactly, then of a special someone. At least that would’ve been mention of Angie in some capacity.

“Right. Of course.” He cleared his throat and shuffled awkwardly, “Well, I just came to drop these off. Could you see that she gets them?”

From inside his jacket he withdrew a slim packet of files, all bundled up and stamped with a big bold red ‘CONFIDENTIAL.’

“Yeah. Sure.” She held out her hand with a shrug and took the proffered documents. About to bid him goodnight, she paused, “Hey, you want to come in?”

If asked, she wouldn’t have been able to say what possessed her to offer. Perhaps it was just good manners, her Italian sense of hospitality so firmly engrained in her bones.

For a moment he looked thoughtful, “Thank you. But no. Like you said: Director Carter is a very private person. I don’t think she’d take kindly to me poking around her apartment.”

“ _Director Carter_ isn’t the only one who lives here,” Angie countered. She may or may not have sounded a little bitter.

He smiled, apologetic, “I know. But all the same.” Ducking his head, he turned to leave, “Have a good evening.”

At that moment two things happened. One: his crutch lost its purchase on the slick marble floor. Two: his bad leg twisted and came crashing down, snapping the prosthetic limb at the ankle.

Lunging forward, Angie caught him by the arm before he pitched over onto the ground. He swore with a grimace and held onto her shoulder for support.

“Dammit! I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she chided, “Come on. I’ll fix that up for you.”

“I don’t want to intrude-”

“There’ll be no more of that now,” Angie levelled a stern glare, “You’re coming inside, and I’m fixing that leg. No excuses.”

At last he conceded defeat, and together they hobbled inside. Lowering himself onto one of the leather couches, he hissed in pain. Angie knelt in front of him, dropping the files onto the couch next to him, and began rolling up his pant leg to get access to the limb. His expression said he would rather be in any situation than this, and he kept glancing over his shoulder as though he expected Peggy to burst in on them with a Gatling gun at any moment.

Carefully Angie unhooked the prosthetic limb’s harness, leaning back on her haunches to give it a good once-over. She turned it over in her hands, and scowled at the broken ankle.

“What a piece of trash,” she muttered to herself, then said to him, “Is this typical of prosthetics?”

He half nodded and shrugged, rubbing at the pinkish skin around the stump of his leg, “Pretty much.”

“Well, I can fix this in a jiffy, but if you’d like I could whip up something much better in a day or two.”

Normally this would just be about bragging rights, but studying the rudimentary prosthetic in her hands, Angie realised she was steaming mad.

How many amputees from the war where stuck being hitched up to garbage like this? What a wonderful way to thank them for their war service. ‘ _Good job! Welcome back! Here’s a peg leg! If you take a right, you can get your courtesy parrot too!_ ’

That was only a small exaggeration. This really was quite a basic limb.

He looked like he was going to decline her offer, and no small amount of scepticism lingered on the lines of his face. Before he could do so, however, Angie grinned and rapped his knee with her knuckles, “I’ll make it good enough that you could take a lady dancing again.” She even threw in a wink.

He laughed and gave a rueful shake of his head, “You offering?”

“Me? No way. I’m accounted for,” she tilted her head and gave him an appraising glance, “But something tells me you won’t have too much trouble finding a partner for the dance floor.”

Embarrassed yet pleased by her brazenness, he flushed and looked away with another laugh. It was a trick Angie had learned when tending the scrapes and burns of younger sisters and cousins – step one: make the patient laugh. Never make a fuss; that only makes things worse. Especially with kiddies.

True to her word, she patched up the prosthetic by replacing the snapped pin in the joint. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but she jimmied up a spare bolt she had in her little red toolbox. Perhaps ‘little’ wasn’t the right word. It had taken Mr. Fancy and two of the guys working for the moving company to move it to and from the truck. To Angie it was little though. Her father would laugh at it and call it _la greppia_ – ‘the baby’s crib.’

When he tested the limb out and found that it worked, he seemed surprised, “I can’t thank you enough.”

She waved him away and walked with him to the door, “Don’t mention it.”

As he was about to leave, he paused and stuck out his hand, “I’m Daniel, by the way. Daniel Sousa.”

“Angie Martinelli,” she smiled warmly and grasped his hand, “Don’t let that bolt stay in there too long, you hear? It needs proper fixing soon.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he gave her a mock salute, eyes twinkling. Then he was waving from the elevator. Then gone.

It wasn’t until she was through her third glass of wine and halfway through her second helping of lasagne later that evening, that Angie remember the files on the couch.

Perhaps it was the wine buzzing around in her head. Perhaps it was just plain simple curiosity that got the better of her. Regardless, Angie wandered into the lounge and pulled the files onto her lap. Balancing her glass of wine in one hand, she twisted her mouth at the bold red ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ before flipping open the first file.

Somehow she thought confidential files would be more stimulating reading. This was just a series of profiles. Her eyes scanned the monochromatic photos pinned to each docket: Viktor Abakumov with his long doughy face, Lavrentiy Beria with dark eyes hidden behind the flash of his round glasses, and completely unremarkable Ivan Serov. Her gaze passed right over the last one; he looked like someone you’d walk by in the street, like a librarian or catalogue manager.

In fact it wasn’t until she started reading the words below their pictures that she began to really look at them.

 **Viktor Abakumov:** head of MGB, Minister for Soviet State Security, in charge of the fabricating criminal cases in order to accuse and execute prominent political opponents of Stalin. Notorious for enjoying torturing his prisoners personally.

 **Lavrentiy Beria:** Marshal of the Soviet Union, ex-chief of the NKVD, and rival of Viktor Abakumov despite their close collaboration. Recently he supervised the establishment of Communist regimes across Eastern Europe by _coup d’état_ and arresting current leaders on the charges of Zionism, cosmopolitanism, and providing weapons to Israel. Over twenty of those leaders were awaiting trial and execution.

 **Ivan Serov:** deputy to Viktor Abakumov, and a major figure in SMERSH, Russia’s counterintelligence department of the Red Army. Responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian peasants during his time as the commissar of the NKVD. “The Butcher of Ukraine” they called him. "The KGB Wolf." Apparently he enjoyed detective novels and boasting that he could break every bone in a man’s body without killing him.

And on the last page, there was written something about “The Doctor’s Plot” which Angie didn’t really want to read at that point because she was starting to feel a bit sick. Instead, she closed the files and wandered off to take that bath. She desperately wanted to feel clean.

Two days later Peggy returned from DC. Angie would like to have been able to say she had almost forgotten about the confidential files, but that would have been blatantly untrue. It wasn’t like she could just scrub her mind with bleach and go back to her merry gallivanting with Corsairs. Not when she worried her lip between her teeth, and her gaze strayed to those files to where she’d left them on the couch.

At least having Peggy back home meant that she could forget about it. If only for a few raunchy hours.

Currently they were sitting in one of their massive four-poster beds, enclosed in that loose-boned post-coital contentment, in which Angie felt like a rag-doll and knew her hair must be a mess but couldn’t bring herself to care. She had wandered off and returned to bed with a small plate of food, while Peggy had propped those confidential files on her knee and was flicking through them with a pensive scowl.

Sex always made Angie hungry, whereas it made Peggy productive.

Dipping a hunk of bread in some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, Angie chewed and asked, “Exciting reading?”

Peggy flipped a page over, her thick rimmed reading glasses glinting in the low lamplight, “Absolutely riveting.”

“Yeah, they seem like pretty scummy guys.” Angie tried to make it sound nonchalant as she stuffed her mouth with more food, but she was sure Peggy heard something there. Curse her for being so damn perceptive.

Without looking over, Peggy replied dryly, “Darling, you do know what ‘ _confidential_ ’ means?”

“Of course I do!” Angie faked offense even while mumbling around bread and oil, “It’s the information you bounce off me as pillow-talk after I’ve made you come particularly hard.”

Still reading the files, Peggy reached over and slapped Angie’s shoulder.

Grinning, Angie pushed the last of the food into her mouth, then set the plate on the bedside table. The first time she’d brought food to bed, Peggy had frowned, but Angie had swore blue and blind that she wouldn’t drop a single crumb. Even now she looked down in smug satisfaction to find that she remained true to her word.

Snuggling down into the sheets, she curled up next to Peggy, resting her head on Peggy’s bare shoulder, “We had Operation Paperclip, but there must be a Russian equivalent, right?”

“Operation Osoaviakhim,” Peggy replied, finger toying with the edge of another page before turning it over to read the one beneath it.

“Right. That,” Angie didn’t even bother trying to pronounce that jumble of syllables. Italian was one thing, and maybe even a smidgen of French. But Russian? No way, “Well, the way I see it: the Ruskies need genius engineers, and you need a man on the inside to feed you information so you can take down the baddies.”

Peggy blinked down at the paper in her hands, then looked up with a stern glance, “Absolutely not.”

“But you haven’t even heard my proposition yet!” she whined.

Immediately Peggy closed the files with a muted slap of her hands, and threw them down on the floor on her side of the bed. Then she rolled over and turned her full attention to Angie, “Hell would freeze over before I’d send you off to spy on some of Russia’s most cruel and dangerous individuals.”

“You let me go to Italy.”

“I was with you in Italy. And I had no choice but to take you with me.”

With a huff, Angie burrowed her face further into the sweet-smelling space between Peggy’s neck and collarbone, “Fine. I was just trying to help.”

Peggy draped an arm over Angie’s side so that she could trace her fingers across the dip of Angie’s spine, “I know.”

“I met one of your underlings the other day, by the way,” Angie brushed her lips across Peggy’s collarbone.

Peggy hummed, her eyes sliding shut, “I know. He told me.”

“He seemed mighty confused to see me here,” Angie grumbled, and if she sounded a bit sullen, well…good, “Asked if I was the cook.”

At that Peggy laughed.

“It’s not funny!” Angie’s lower lip stuck out and she pinched at Peggy’s hip, “I wish you’d-” But she cut herself off before she could finish that sentence, cheeks going pink.

“No, go on,” Peggy smiled down at her, eyes dark and bright all at once, “Tell me. You wish I’d what?”

“I wish you’d tell people about me.”

As soon as she’d said it, Angie wished she could sink right through the floor. All at once Peggy’s whole face softened and she was looking at Angie like she’d hung the moon, or something ridiculously sappy like that.

“Are you being-?” Peggy started to say, her smile positively _effulgent_.

Angie couldn’t believe she even knew a word like ‘effulgent.’ When did she become the sort of love-sick fool she and her sisters used to make fun of at their favourite gelato café?

“Don’t say it,” she warned, brandishing a finger in Peggy’s face.

But Peggy finished with a sly look, “-possessive?”

Angie groaned and pulled a pillow over her head, and her indignant “No!” was muffled through layers of down and sheets with a thread-count higher than most home incomes.

Laughing, Peggy rolled over so that she was straddling Angie. She pulled the pillow away to pepper kisses across Angie’s furiously blushing face, “I have an idea. Why don’t you join me at Howard’s little fête next week? You can be my plus-one. Hmm?” she nuzzled at Angie’s jaw, “How does that sound?”

Angie grumbled, but couldn’t deny that it sounded wonderful.

 

* * *

 

The door to the cell opened, and a guard entered. He gave a tray of food to Yelena, then marched over to whisper something in Ivan’s ear. Ivan didn’t look over, just cocked his head and nodded.

Ivan leaned forward slowly, and held out his cigarette so that Angie could see it before he put it out on her chair. She could not conceal the gut-deep shudder of relief that rolled through her when he did not put it out on her. He stood and without looking at Yelena he said, “Make sure she is fed.”

Then he shrugged his hands into his pockets and took a step closer, until Angie was pressing herself into her seat, trying to make herself as small as possible, “You did well today, _volchitsa._ We will talk again tomorrow.”

He did not touch her, but she felt it all the same, like a cattle-brand. Then he left with the guard, and Angie was all alone with Yelena.

Yelena approached with the tray, and sat in the chair Ivan had vacated. She scraped the chair forward so that they were so close they were almost touching, and Angie leaned back as far as her restraints allowed. In spite of herself her eyes darted hungrily down to the tray. She hadn’t seen solid food in a week. Only water and a flavourless bowl of meal made with rye-flour.

On the tray ingots of meat glistened pink, butter melted soft and golden on a steaming slab of bread, and beetroot glittered richly like cut rubies. Yelena raised the knife and fork, and began to cut, lifting a piece of meat to Angie’s mouth.

Drawing in a deep shuddering breath, Angie allowed herself to be handfed like a child. It wasn’t until halfway through the meal that she dared to speak.

“What is it?” she nodded down at the meat.

Yelena smiled, slow and sharp. Before answering, she gave a pointed look at the place where Angie’s right leg used to be, the hollow space now a scrupulously cleaned and cauterised wound just above the knee. Then she looked Angie in the eye and said sweetly, “Leg of lamb.”

Angie wished she had kept her big mouth shut.


	4. La Fête

_La Fête - Grande Armée slang, meaning ‘a party’ but actually referring to ‘the War’_

 

* * *

 

They woke her up at some ungodly hour of the morning with a needle and carbolic acid.

It was difficult to kick and scream when you had only one leg and barely any sleep, but Angie managed to put up quite the performance with gusto. She even bit Yelena on the arm so hard the woman bled through her thick woollen uniform jacket. For her troubles Yelena reared back with a hiss and backhanded Angie until her ears rang and she tasted copper. Then she was dragged upright and shoved back into that chair.

Oh, how she hated that chair. She dreamed of a day when they left her to the pile of musty rags they called a bed. Heck, she dreamed of any day that didn’t involve rusty piano wire and cramped muscles atop that damn wobbly chair.

The least they could do was fix the wonky leg.

Not hers. The chair’s.

She was pretty sure hers was a lost cause at this point.

Bound once again, Angie fought the tremble in her arms. Her tongue darted out, tasting blood from her split lip and from Yelena’s arm. Ivan had waited until the scuffle was over before entering the room. Angie froze. She hadn’t known that he’d been lurking around outside.

If she thought the syringe of carbolic acid was bad in Yelena’s hands –

She ducked her head, shoulders hunched, as Ivan took the needle from Yelena and sat in his own chair across from Angie. He sat so close she could feel the whisper of his crisp pant leg against her bare left ankle.

Holding up the needle, he flicked the syringe. Then he just looked at her.

For hours.

They sat together in complete silence. The only noise was the occasional crossing of Ivan’s legs, and Angie’s own hard breathing. With every roll of the needle and syringe through Ivan’s fingers, Angie grew more and more frantic, nerves fraying like a taut rope, heartbeat a distant roar in her ears, a mad panicked bruit.

Three hours in, she cracked.

“What do you want from me?”

Ivan did not answer.

“Please, just-! Just tell me what you want me to say! Tell me, and I’ll say it!”

Ivan ignored her, and tapped the syringe against his knee.

Four hours in, and she was crying, great dry heaving sobs shaking her chest, making the chair beneath her creak and rock. She begged him to let her speak, blubbering and thrashing until the wire cut into the backs of her wrists.

When he finally spoke, finally acknowledged her, the relief that rushed through her whole body was a palpable thing.

“I’m not interested in what you think I want to hear,” his voice was calm and even, “I’m interested in the truth.”

“I’ve been giving you that,” she gasped, voice rough with desperation, “I haven’t lied! Please –”

“We'll have no interrogation today,” he sighed, rising to his feet, “You’re no good to me today.” He turned and placed the carbolic acid on the seat of his chair, “We’ll talk again tomorrow. Once you’ve calmed down.”

He snapped his fingers at Yelena, who moved forward to untie Angie from the chair.

This time Angie didn’t fight.

 

* * *

 

When Peggy had mentioned a ‘little fête’ Angie should’ve known it would be anything but little. This was Howard Stark they were talking about after all. He wouldn’t know the meaning of modesty if it held him up at gunpoint and absconded with his moustache.

It was a glittering affair of colour and music and more stars than Angie had ever seen. Oh, sure – she’d gotten a glimpse of a few walking down the street every now and then, but never more than one or two at a time. Everyone looked so glamorous too. Surely they wouldn’t give any notice to someone like Angie.

Which led her to the obvious question: why were they all staring?

She certainly didn’t know why everyone kept giving Peggy and Angie speculative glances when they entered and crossed the main ballroom to their designated table. They weren’t being obvious or nothing. They weren’t even touching each other. Were they really that unsubtle?

“Relax,” Peggy murmured into her ear. Her lipstick matched the shade of her long clinging red gown, though even when dressed to the nines she still smelled like boot polish and gun oil beneath a faint haze of perfume, “It’s because we’ve been invited as Howard’s personal guests, and are sitting as his table.”

Oh. Phew.

“Here I thought we were too lovey-dovey even for this crowd,” Angie muttered back. Her tone was dry but she really was relieved.

Great. Now all she had to worry about was whether or not she looked like someone The Howard Stark would have as a personal guest. Were her shoes appropriate? What about her hair? Should she smile more? No – given her luck, she probably had something in her teeth.

Peggy reached over then and gave Angie’s arm a gentle squeeze, her black gloves silky and cool, “Have I mentioned that the dress you’re wearing is giving me particularly fiendish thoughts tonight?”

Jesus H Christ.

Peggy said it like she was commenting on the chandeliers, all unflappable and smooth as you please.

Angie couldn’t hide flush that rose to her cheeks, and her eyes darted around at those guests nearest to them, “Now we _are_ being obvious.”

With a hum and a wicked gleam in her eye, Peggy replied, “Perhaps. But it stopped you from worrying so much, didn’t it?”

In spite of herself, Angie gave a small _harrumph_. Then, seeing a familiar face across the ballroom, she waved. Daniel, looking sharp in a black tux, gave a smile and nod in return. If Angie knew Peggy – and boy, did she know Peggy – then Agent Sousa wasn’t the only man she had stationed around the building.

Angie leaned in and asked, “Do you have your guys stake out every single party you attend?”

“Only the parties that include people I care about,” Peggy replied simply.

Aw, hell. How could a girl complain about an answer like _that_?

No sooner had they dropped their small clutches off at the table – their coats already taken from them by the front door – than Howard himself appeared wearing a spotless white tux with a woman draped across one arm.

“You made it!” He greeted both of them, then gestured to his date, “Ladies, this is Ida Emke. Ida, these are my good friends, Peggy and Angie.”

At first glance Ida was exactly the type of woman Howard would use to adorn his arm for an evening. What with her fine-boned features and hair glinting full and golden as a field of wheat. Not to mention that plunging neckline.

Not that Angie was admiring or nothing. It was just a very difficult neckline to miss. Honest to God.

Ida held out her hand, sheathed in a long white glove that went up past her elbows, and shook each of theirs in turn, “Howie tells me he keeps you two in one of his Manhattan establishments?”

“Does he now?” Peggy’s voice was perfectly sweet, but the look she gave Howard would have sent any sane man sprinting in the opposite direction.

Howard laughed a little too loudly, then wrapped his arm around Angie’s waist, “Say, how about a dance?”

“What a wonderful idea,” Peggy’s smile was too broad, revealing too many teeth, “That will give me and Ida a chance to catch up. I have some excellent stories about _Howie_ to tell.”

Suddenly Howard looked like he regretted many decisions in life. Inviting them to the party being one. Opening his big mouth being another.

Angie leaned in with a grin and said softly to Peggy, “Play nice,” before she grabbed Howard by the elbow and hauled his sorry tuchus out onto the dancefloor.

Once they were out there – not the first pair to dance together, though certainly the pair that earned the most curious stares – Angie swatted at Howard’s shoulder.

“Ow! What was that for?” he whined, indignant.

“Oh, please! You know why!” she shook her head, then put her hand back on his shoulder.

Taking up her other hand, he grumbled but started to dance, “Why do you always have to be so violent?”

“ _Me?"_

“Peggy never hits me – much.” He added the last bit like an afterthought.

With an amused snort Angie let herself be led around the dancefloor. All things aside, she and Howard actually got along rather well. The first time they met had been at one of his hangars full of toys, and Angie had gushed over his collection with what he considered the appropriate amount of enthusiasm. He’d been all pleased and puffed up until her attention turned critical.

“The heck have you done here?” she pointed at a hulk of jointed metal in the back corner.

“Oh, he’s not finished yet,” Howard leaned on the device – half again as tall as he was – and tapped it lovingly on its long bent arm, “But when he is, he’ll revolutionise the production industry, let me tell you!”

Angie walked around it, squinting, “You should add an extra joint here,” she rapped at it with her knuckles, “It needs more freedom of motion around the perpendicular axis.”

Howard spluttered and blustered, and soon the two were engaged in a heated debate. At one point Peggy and Jarvis tried to pull them away, but instead the two had rolled up their sleeves and started disassembling the giant robotic arm right then and there. Their irritated snaps and growls dissolved into focused grunts as they worked on perfecting the machine together. By the end of the whole ordeal – during which time Peggy and Jarvis had thrown their hands up and wandered off for a cup of tea – Angie and Howard were grinning from ear to ear, hands black with grease.

Later Howard nudged Peggy with his elbow and said, “She’s clever, that one.”

Based on the stunned look on Peggy’s face, Angie could only guess that wasn’t a compliment Howard Stark gave often.

On the dancefloor Howard’s hand slipped lower down her back. Lower than was decent. She gave him a warning look, and he shrugged, “What? Can you blame a guy?”

“Yes,” she jammed her heel down on his toe, “And I’ll also tell Peggy if you do it again.”

Wincing, he managed to hide a limp as he led them around the floor, “An idle threat. You wouldn’t do it.”

“And why is that?”

He flashed her an impish grin, “Because I’m too pretty to die so young.”

Angie couldn’t help it. She laughed.

He really was a smarmy bastard, but he was _their_ smarmy bastard.

With a smirk – which Angie wanted to slap off his face just for the principle of the thing – Howard pulled her closer when the music slowed right down. She didn’t mind though. Too much, anyway. Where Angie and Peggy were concerned, Howard was all bark and no bite.

Not that he wouldn’t take a bite if they let him. But Angie would rather not think about that, thank you very much.

And that was when Angie decided to ask him. Later she would regret it. And not that much later, either. In fact, in exactly fifty-six minutes she would come to regret this next conversation very much. But it wouldn’t be until three months later that she would fully realise why.

“Hey, Howard? Can I run an idea by you?”

“That depends. Does it involve you quitting your job at the Air Force and joining my Robotics Program?” he mused, pretending to stare thoughtfully over her shoulder while really he was sneaking a peak down her dress.

Oh, for the love of-! She didn’t even have that much cleavage to begin with!

“You don’t have a Robotics Program,” she shot back.

“But I would if you joined it.”

Making an exasperated noise in the back of her throat, she forged ahead, “You know those Russian guys Peggy’s trying to bring down? Abakumov and Beria and Serov?”

His eyebrows rose in genuine surprise, and he was looking her straight in the eye now. No more funny business, “Yes. But how do you know about them?”

Instead of answering she shrugged and took evasive action, “Well, it sounds like you’re struggling for inside intel. And,” she added, “the Russians are struggling for scientists in this tech race we’ve got going on.”

“Last I looked, you weren’t a scientist,” Howard pointed out. Their dancing remained slow, even though the music switched to something more upbeat, leaving them an isolated pair amidst other whirling couples.

“And yet you want to recruit me for your non-existent Robotics Program,” she countered.

He smirked, “Maybe I just want the pleasure of your company.”

Angie rolled her eyes, “Think about it. I could earn their trust by ‘stealing’ some of your tech and taking it to them. Of course it’d just be harmless, but you get the point.”

He opened his mouth to retort, then closed it again when he couldn’t think of anything witty to say. Then Angie felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned around to find Ida Emke standing there. Smiling. Her pale gaze flicked up and down, and if Angie didn’t know better she’d say that Ida looked _appraising_.

But that was crazy talk.

Then again, this was one of Howard’s gals. She could be dead serious. And if the way Ida had looked at Peggy was any indication, then…well.

Come to think of it, Angie would prefer not to dwell too much on how Ida had looked at Peggy. There were too many metaphors involving ‘cats’ and ‘cream’ and the like.

“Mind if I cut in?” Ida asked, all sultry, hip jutting out to one side.

For a moment Angie panicked and thought Ida was speaking to _her_ , but then – oh, thank god – she was looking at Howard.

Angie held up her hands and backed away as though in surrender, “He’s all yours.”

She left them on the dancefloor, and made her way back to their table, where Peggy was nursing a glass of expensive champagne and looking aloof. Not for the first time Angie wished she could take Peggy for a spin on the dancefloor. But not in this crowd. Too many people. Too many cameras.

Steeling herself against melancholy, Angie marched on over to their table, intent on having a glass of champagne for herself. She’d be damned if she was going to sulk on a classy night like this.

Too bad everything went to hell and back exactly fifty-six minutes later.

Fifty-six minutes later they were finishing off their desserts – individual bowls of crème brûlée, which Angie and Peggy both demolished – and their faces were awash in the warm glow of candlelight. Howard and Angie were engaged in an animated discussion about one of his latest projects – a long range intercontinental ballistic missile that could theoretically jettison something out into space – and Ida was watching them studiously, her eyes flicking between the pair.

And that’s when Howard decided to turn to Peggy, whose cheek was bulging with crème brûlée, and say, “Speaking of tech – Hey, Peggy! Did Angie tell you her latest plan about getting into Russ –”

Angie kicked Howard under the table, and he yelped, but the damage had been already done.

Peggy froze, spoon in her mouth. Carefully, she put her cutlery down, swallowed, then said, “I beg your pardon?”

Uh oh.

Howard wasn’t an idiot. He looked between Angie and Peggy – at the way Angie hung her head, avoiding the dangerous look in Peggy’s eye – and held up his hands, “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

Angie grimaced at Peggy, “I’m sorry,” she said, quailing under that gaze.

Peggy’s expression was dark and thunderous. She stood, furious, chair scraping back with a squeal against the polished marble floor, drawing the attention of people at nearby tables, but she didn’t seem to care. Without a word, she grabbed Angie by the arm and hauled her away. She stormed off, dragging Angie behind her in spite of her indignant protests, until she found an empty billiards room. Slamming the door behind them, she rounded on Angie.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Peggy snarled, fingers still gripping Angie’s forearm tight, “Going above my head? To _Howard?”_

“I can do this, Peg! I can help get these guys! I’ve read their files. We can’t just let them–”

“There is no _‘we’_ about it,” Peggy interrupted, eyes blazing, “I will not put you in danger!”

Bristling, Angie pushed Peggy’s hand away, “I already have a mother, Pegs! I don't need another one!”

“God, Angie!” Peggy yelled – actually yelled – her voice throaty and scratchy and torn, ragged as wet paper, reverberating along the dark wood-panelled walls, “I can’t lose you too!”

Oh.

_Oh no._

Turning away, Peggy swiped at the tears glinting on her cheeks. She breathed deeply, gathering herself, hands on her hips, head tipped back, looking at the ceiling as though trying to keep the tears at bay with gravity alone.

Angie hesitated, then reached out. When she touched Peggy’s shoulder, Peggy flinched, then fixed her with a hard-eyed stare.

“I’m sorry,” Angie said softly, “I won’t bring it up again.”

Rather than respond, Peggy just swallowed and looked away again.

“Should we head back out?”

“Just –” Peggy gave a long slow shaky exhalation, “Just give me a minute.”

“Take as long as you need, hun.”

Hand still on Peggy’s shoulder, Angie moved closer, lowering her arm to wrap it around Peggy’s waist. Peggy remained stiff, unyielding, the muscles in her jaw bunching, looking anywhere but at her.

“You know I could never leave you, right?” Angie murmured, pressing a soothing kiss to Peggy’s shoulder.

Peggy’s hand flew to her mouth to muffle the choked sound that escaped. She nodded, a brief jerky motion, and through the silky fingers of her glove, she whispered, “Yes. I know, darling.”


	5. Pan Pan

_Pan Pan - International radio urgency call. It usually indicates a threat to the safety of an aircraft or its passengers. It is, however, less urgent than M'aidez. Pan Pan comes from the French word “Panne” which means “failure"_

 

* * *

 

True to her word, Angie didn’t bring up the topic of Russia again. Not that it helped much. After the party life at home had grown tense.

They had never fought before. Not like this. Even that time when Peggy had first said, “I love you” and Angie had panicked rather than respond accordingly – even that couldn’t compare to this. Or maybe that was because Peggy had never been the one to avoid her.

Normally Peggy was the one to mend bridges. Both of them had their own broad stubborn streak, but in the past it had never deterred them from speaking to one another for longer than a few hours. Maybe one whole day. Maximum.

Four days, however, was starting to feel a little excessive.

Angie had no idea how to handle this sort of situation. For starters her prior relationship experience could be summed up by a few failed attempts at boyfriends, and a handful of very rushed, very salacious liaisons with women. The former proved that her taste in men was quite limited – though still somewhat extant. Depended on the man, to be perfectly honest. While the latter proved that yep, gals really did it for her. A heck of a lot more than guys did. And neither gave her any background on how to successfully handle herself in a long term adult relationship.

At eight years – that number still boggled her mind (eight years!) – this relationship with Peggy was easily the longest in her life. In fact Angie would be lying if she said this wasn’t the longest relationship she would _ever_ have. Not that she could know for sure about that, but – let’s face it – she knew it was true.

Whether the same was true for Peggy, Angie couldn’t say with certainty. There was still so much about Peggy that remained a mystery, despite all the information Angie had managed to pry from her – though it felt like pulling teeth sometimes.

Looking at Peggy avoid her gaze in the kitchen on the morning of the fourth day, watching her brew a cup of tea and butter a piece of toast, Angie was struck with the sudden realisation that she could imagine Peggy in a relationship with someone else, but she couldn’t imagine herself in the same scenario. For her Peggy was it. The whole shebang. The big picture.

But Peggy –

Peggy could move on. Peggy could endure anything. Peggy was a survivor.

Angie on the other hand wasn’t so good at weathering storms.

That morning – just like the previous three mornings – Peggy left without a word, and Angie let her. Over eighty hours since Howard’s little party, and Angie was really starting to regret sticking her nose in places where it didn’t belong.

Not as much as she would come to regret it later. But still.

She regretted talking with Howard. She regretted broaching the subject with Peggy in the first place. She regretting reading those damn files. She regretted keeping the elevator door open for Agent Sousa. Should’ve just let him catch the elevator after her.

Ok, that wasn’t fair. Neither was it true. Daniel didn’t deserve that.

Speaking of Daniel.

He certainly wasn’t the last person Angie expected to find leaving her apartment as she arrived home from work later that evening, but he was pretty close to the top. As far as her days went, this one had been pretty crappy. Even her supervisor, Rodriguez, noticed, and had tried cheering her up by gifting her a Douglas B-26 Invader.

It hadn’t worked. Not really. Although she appreciated the gesture, she couldn’t summon up her typical zeal.  At that point Rodriguez had told her to go home early, so here Angie was, trudging out of the elevator in her work clothes.

Down the hall, the apartment door opened, and out stepped none other than Agent Sousa himself, looking as smart as ever in his herringbone jacket and argyle sweater vest. Angie faltered for a moment, then held the elevator door open as Daniel made his way over.

“Seems like we have a strange affinity for elevators,” he greeted her with a pleasant smile.

She couldn’t bring herself to return it, though she made an effort to appear more accommodating if nothing else, “Seems so.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder back towards the door, “I was just dropping off some more files.”

The very last thing Angie wanted to think about was more confidential files. She’d had enough of them to last one lifetime, thanks.

So instead she asked, “How’s the leg?”

“What leg?” he joked.

Ok, that earned a tight smile. What? It was funny, and she needed a smile, dammit. She enjoy a little self-deprecating humour, especially in her current mood. She was about to wave and bid him goodnight, when he shuffled his feet and crutch, and gave her an awkward look.

“Director Carter told me,” he said without preamble, “about you.”

At first Angie thought he was referring to something else – something with long famous winters and armies painted red – but then she blinked and understood.

“Oh. _Oh!_ You mean us! Wait –” she put her hand on his arm as he was about to get into the elevator, “-she did? Really?”

He nodded, standing over the threshold, “Yeah. I’m glad for you. And for her. For the both of you. Together.” He fumbled for words, obviously unused to this kind of conversation. At last he straightened and the slope of his shoulders was forward, sincere, “What I mean to say is: you make her very happy.”

Letting go of his arm, Angie swallowed past an obstruction in her throat, “That’s –” she took a step back and Daniel stepped fully into the elevator, “Thank you.”

He gave her a puzzled grin, “What for?”

Angie shook her head and gave a small incredulous laugh, “Nothing. It’s – nothing. Good night, Daniel.”

“Night.”

And the elevator slid shut, leaving her alone in the hallway. 

Looking to the front door of their apartment, Angie took a deep breath and went inside.

Peggy was already seated at her vanity in their room, located just outside the sprawling ensuite bathroom. Her eyes flickered in the oval mirror to see who had arrived. When she saw it was only Angie she continued pinning up the last of her curls, her black and red robe glinting silkily in the shaded lamplight.

Pausing at the door, Angie made her way over to the four-poster bed and leaned against one of the bed posts. For a moment she just watched Peggy finishing up her nightly routine. Then she said, “Hi.”

God, she wanted to smack herself in the face. _Hi?_   Who even says that?

She could see Peggy blink in the mirror, though Peggy still refused to look at her, “Hi.”

At least she returned the greeting. That wasn’t nothing.

Crossing her arms, Angie cleared her throat, “You told Daniel about us.” It wasn’t a question.

If Angie hadn’t known Peggy, she would have missed the almost imperceptible way her movements slowed, the way she licked the backs of her teeth before replying, “Yes. I thought someone other than Howard and Mr. Jarvis ought to know.”

“And all of RAE Farnborough,” Angie added.

In spite of herself Peggy gave a small huff of laughter, and her eyes flicked up in the mirror, meeting Angie’s.

If you’d told Angie nine years ago that she’d get a tangible, electric thrill just from one woman looking at her, she would’ve laughed.

More fool her.

Holding Peggy’s gaze, Angie said, “You didn’t have to, you know. Tell anyone.”

With a sigh and an air of steely resolve, Peggy turned around to face her fully, “I know. But I wanted to.”

“I appreciate it. I really do,” Angie began, fingers wringing in the grimy sleeves of her overalls, “I thought – Well. I guess that doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

Peggy rose to her feet and crossed the space between them, footsteps fluid and quiet. She didn’t say anything. Just pinned Angie with _that_ look. The one Angie remembered from smoky Command hallways and romantic nights beneath a skeletal Focke-Wulf.

Mouth dry, Angie pressed herself back until the wooden post was digging into her spine, “You’ll get your robe all dirty,” she gestured faintly down at her grease-smeared overalls.

Peggy trapped her against the post, fingers going to the zipper on Angie’s overalls, “I guess these will just have to go then.”

Well, then.

At least the home and relationship front was starting to look up.

Too bad Angie wouldn’t be in town long enough to fully appreciate it.

On the fifth day since the party, Angie was in late for work. She also was wearing an uncharacteristic neck-scarf. If anyone asked, she’d either tell them to buzz off and mind their own damn business, or make some vague comment about liking the idea ever since she saw Grace Kelly wear one. Of course Grace Kelly pulled it off with more style than Angie in her baggy overalls, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was to hide all the hickeys.

Turned out Angie wasn’t the only one who had the occasional possessive inclinations.

Luckily for her none of the boys asked. Guys were good like that. Especially this lot. Rodriguez, however, did give her a knowing smirk when she hummed on the way to her Douglas B-26 Invader with considerably more skip in the step than yesterday.

Not that Rodriguez knew about Peggy. God, no. He probably just suspected she had a fella. Most people did. Which was all fine with her. Less questions about her romantic interests and inclinations was always a good thing.

That being said there was one person who mentioned the neck-scarf.

Angie teetered on a ladder, elbows-deep in the Invader’s engine – so, pretty much in heaven as far as she was concerned – when she heard it. A woman’s voice.

“Oh, wow! Would you look at that!”

Puzzled, Angie peered over her shoulder. A woman was gaping at the aircraft, walking around its wings. She wore a conservatively cut skirt, and a conservatively buttoned shirt, and conservative shoes. But for all that she walked with that same eerie noiseless quality Peggy had. Her heels should have clacked against the concrete slab, but instead gave the impression of walking as though on the air just above it.

“Um, excuse me?” Angie called, voice echoing throughout the hangar, “Ma’am? You’re not supposed to be out here without the proper clearance.”

Completely true. Angie herself had a little nametag with her picture and details hooked to her breast pocket.

The woman seemed utterly unperturbed by that fact, “Do you work on these planes all by yourself?” she gushed.

Putting her tools aside, Angie descended the ladder, “The ones in this hangar, yes.”

The woman rounded the wing and finally came face to face with her, “That’s amazing! Oh!” she clapped her hands beneath her chin, blonde curls bouncing, “I love your little pink gloves and neck-scarf! Aren’t they just darling! My name’s Dorothy Underwood, by the way. But, please, call me Dottie! Everybody does.” She held out her hand and approached.

Hang on.

Now that the woman was closer, Angie thought she recognised her. She removed her gloves to shake Dottie’s hand, “Nice to meet you, Dot. Say, are you looking for one of the guys? Because I can show you to them, if you’d like.”

“No, silly!” Dottie smiled, and there was something very familiar about that smile, broad and sharp as a blade, “I’m here for you!”

Angie didn’t even have time for a frown and a confused, “Wha-?” before Dottie struck, serpent-quick.

There was a sharp jab in her neck, a flash of silver like a needle in Dottie’s hands.

Then there was nothing.


	6. Matryoshka: Part 1

Angie awoke somewhere over the Baltic Sea. The hum of engines roared in her ears, and a groggy look around showed that she was strapped to a seat in the storage compartment of a –

-Actually she couldn’t tell what kind of plane this was. Just went to show how strong the drugs they gave her really were.

All she could say with any accuracy was this: She was in an aircraft. Dottie Underwood – or Ida Emke, or whatever she called herself – was seated beside her. There were stacks of crates held down with netting, all stamped with ‘STARK INDUSTRIES.’

Oh, and there was a needle in her left arm.

Head lolling and bobbing, she was leaning forward in her harness and couldn’t summon the strength to sit upright. Instead she reached out and weakly grasped at the fabric of Dottie’s sleeve.

Dottie’s head whipped around, and it was only then that Angie realised there was a rifle slung across her back. She was dressed in a sleek dark suit, cut in a severe military style, and her blonde curls had been slicked back into a strict bun. Her pale gaze bore into Angie’s, and gone were the smiles like candy apples, all sweet and sour at once.

Angie would soon learn that this persona was Yelena. Deadly, unyielding Yelena, whose words were like currency or rationed cigarettes, precious things to be bartered with or locked away behind a hard, narrow, unpainted mouth.

Yelena pried Angie’s fingers from her sleeve, placing it almost gently back down. Then she fiddled with the needle at the crook of Angie’s elbow, and everything blurred into a white static.

 

* * *

 

The next time Angie woke, she was still drowning in the same drugged haze. Except this time Yelena was unhooking her from the harness, and yanking her to her feet. There she swayed until she was pulled along in an uneven gait. She blinked as though her eyelids were sticking together with slow-working epoxy resin. She would have fallen flat on her face if not for Yelena’s firm grip.

The needle and drugs were gone, but there were men in uniform everywhere, carting away the crates of Howard Stark’s inventions. Angie got only a brief squinting glimpse of dappled sunlight through trees – bald with autumn, the ground slick with frost – before she was in an underground facility. Surrounded by stacks and stacks of Stark Industries crates, she was pushed down into a chair in front of a desk. Behind the desk sat a tired looking man with dark hair and darker circles under his eyes.

While he spoke to Yelena in those full-bodied vowels Russian had, Angie peered drunkenly around. One by one the crates were hoisted open and inspected. The soldiers handled the wares roughly, until the man behind the desk barked at them, and then they moved with exaggerated slowness. If Angie didn’t know better she would’ve said it was almost sarcastic, the change in pace.

“That one’s not s’pposed to be like that,” she slurred, jerking her chin at an item one of the soldiers held aloft.

Abruptly everyone stopped.

“What do you mean?” The man behind the desk asked, his English thick yet fluent.

Angie flapped her hand vaguely in the object’s general direction, “It’s gonna blow. Soon.”

And then she giggled.

Wasn’t it funny? She was kidnapped and taken to Russia, and the thing that killed her would be one of Howard Stark’s idiot inventions.

The soldier who was holding the red glowing vest in question looked suddenly very uneasy. He began babbling in panicked Russian when the vest began to pulse a violent orange.

Yelena hauled Angie upright and over to the soldier with the vest, “Fix it.”

Angie’s eye drooped shut, and her chin dropped forward onto her chest. The sharp crack of Yelena’s palm across her cheek sent the world into a tailspin.

“Fix. It.” Yelena spat, giving Angie’s shoulders a shake for good measure.

With a sullen grumble, Angie took the vest and turned it over in her hands. The soldier looked relieved, dashing away to join his fellows by the door.

“Damn Ruskies. Can’t even get a classic theft an’ kidnappin’ right.” Angie mumbled, speech drawled, “Gotta do everythin’ for ‘em.”

Her fingers felt fat and unwieldy as she fumbled with the locking mechanism on the vest. They were lucky Howard had shown her all his toys, else this whole office full of Red Army personnel would’ve been blown into the last century.

There was a series of clicks, and the vest – which had started to steam and burn a hot lurid yellow – opened.

“There,” Angie dropped the neutralised vest onto the floor, and staggered back to her chair, “You’re welcome.”

The soldiers in the doorway all breathed a collective sigh of relief, then stiffened when Yelena’s hard gaze raked over them. She didn’t need to speak to get them to leap back into motion, their heads ducked, cowed.

The man behind the desk eyed Angie warily now. Come to think of it, he looked more familiar wearing that expression.

Ah, yes.

She recognised him now. From Peggy’s file. That was Oleg Penkovsky. Personal friend to Ivan Serov. Which mean that Ivan Serov and his motley crew of political riffraff couldn’t be far off.

Fantastic. Life just couldn’t get any better.

Steepling his fingers atop the desk, Oleg leaned forward, “You are familiar with Howard Stark’s inventions, Ms -?” he glanced down at a file on his desk, “-Angela Martinelli?”

She shrugged, “Yeah. Kind of.”

“Would you say you and Mr. Stark are friends?”

At that Angie’s face scrunched up, “We’re friendly, I guess.”

Technically not a lie. Angie wouldn’t go so far as to say she and Howard would share a bottle of wine and gab about the latest edition of Vogue. But sure. Friendly. Why not?

It occurred to her then – as though from a great distance – that perhaps she shouldn’t be telling them such information.

Honestly, what was in those drugs they gave her?

Ohhhhhh but that pen was shiny.

“Yelena tells me you built planes for the US Air Force,” Oleg studied her over his hands, “Could you replicate that?”

He pointed to the vest on the ground.

With a thoughtful frown Angie nodded, and the gesture almost made her slip right out of the chair, “Yeah. Sure.”

For a moment Oleg said nothing, then he stamped Angie’s file with red ink and said something to Yelena in Russian. Nodding sharply, Yelena grabbed Angie by the shoulder and pulled her up once more.

“Where are we going?” Angie stumbled after her, tripping over her own feet.

But Yelena did not answer, only marched onward, onward, deeper into the bowels of the facility where the pale bluish lights flickered along the walls, and the air was still and cool. After what felt like miles of concrete tunnels, Yelena shoved Angie into a room and shut the door behind them

For the first time since regaining consciousness Angie felt a prickle of real fear. She definitely did not like the way Yelena was looking at her. No siree.

Yelena unslung the rifle from her shoulders, and for a brief terror-filled moment Angie thought she was going to be shot. Instead Yelena used the rifle to point, “That is where you will sleep. And that,” the barrel swung from a cot in the corner of the room to a series of tables lined with polished, meticulously laid out tools and bright lamps, “that is where you will work.”

“Work on what?” Angie asked.

Again Yelena did not answer. She just put the rifle back over her shoulder and left Angie in the cold room alone.

 

* * *

 

For the duration of her stay in the Motherland Angie never did get used to the cold or the quiet. Every week her guards would bring some new schematic or mechanism of Stark’s, and she would recreate it. She would write out detailed reports of exactly how, all while shivering away.

One week she refused to work until they brought her extra blankets. The two guards dedicated to her cell had tried scaring her into work, but she’d just crossed her arms and glared. Finally they gave up and brought her a thick woollen blanket. Not without giving her a black eye for their troubles, though.

And so she toiled away, blanket draped heavily across her shoulders, humming and singing show tunes. At first her humming had started off real quiet, but when she caught one of her guard’s tapping his foot along to the music, she’d grinned and sang louder.

The other guard had given his partner an exasperated look, but his partner had just shrugged. He must’ve been starved in this silence too. No radio signal way down here. Not from any normal radio, anyway.

She had two pairs of identical clothes. All grey. Just like her blankets, and the walls, and the guards’ uniforms. Grey, grey, grey. Almost three whole months in, and she was sick of the colour grey. If she ever got out of this frigid hellhole, Angie swore she would never wear grey again for as long as she lived.

At least they fed her. Although the food was as uniform as the décor.

What was it with the Soviets and uniformity, anyway? Would it have killed them to throw in some hot sauce?

One thing was for sure – Angie never thought she could’ve grown tired of bread. Boy, was she wrong. What would her Ma say if she ever returned home for one of the weekly family meals? Angela Martinelli? Malign the flaky, delicious, homemade bread rolls her Ma slaved over? Sacrilege.

Which was a foolish thought, really. She’d never escape from this place. She’d die here.

The first time Angie realised that, she’d sat bolt-upright in bed. Her chest felt heavy, her breathing constricted, and her vision swam. In the past she’d never been one for panic attacks, but there’s a first time for everything. Besides, this felt pretty justified.

The next day she hadn’t been able to work at all. Just thinking about picking up a flat-head screwdriver made her stomach turn.

“What is this?” one of her guards, Nikolay, asked. He picked up the device she was supposed to be replicating, and squinted at it as though it would try to bite him.

Sergei, the other guard, snapped something in Russian. Nikolay, however, just made a rude gesture and ignored him.

Out of the two, Angie liked Nikolay best. As far as she could like her guards, that is. Sergei was a dour little man with no sense of humour to speak of, whereas Nikolay was tall and broad-shouldered and had two sons and a daughter with his wife, Alexandra. He’d showed Angie pictures once, chest puffed up with pride. Sometimes he even let Angie walk through the hallways to get some exercise – but only if he was allowed to accompany her, hand on the butt of his rifle at all times.

He was lenient, but he was still a guard, after all.

At least he wasn’t always so ready to leap to his gun or hit Angie. That particularly lovely trait was reserved for Sergei.

“It’s a hair dryer,” Angie sighed, elbows on her workshop table, leaning her chin on her hands.

When Nikolay laughed and mimed using it on his close-cropped hair, she warned, “Don’t actually turn it on. Unless you want a melted face, I mean. That thing could power a city block.”

Slowly Nikolay put the hair dryer back down.

Nikolay was the first of the lot to call her _Anzhelochka._ Surely that was a good sign. Especially since he usually said it with a dimpled smile and a laugh.

Too bad she came to hate the name. Courtesy of Ivan Serov.

Angie was caught almost three months into her captivity. Strange, wasn’t it? To be caught when already in captivity.

A familiar sleek rhombus-shaped metallic device was brought into her room, and her eyes widened at the sight of it. She hadn’t seen that long-range transponder since 1944. It looked as chrome-bright as it had eight years ago in Italy.

The real question was: What the hell was it doing among all of Stark’s technology? And more importantly: Could it send and receive messages this far underground?

The answer to the former Angie suspected she would never know. The answer to the latter was: Yes. Most definitely yes.

Which was what led her to her current predicament.

Ivan Serov was smoking another cigarette. When he exhaled, he smiled, and Angie couldn’t remember seeing anything more terrifying. That sharp smile and those cold, cold eyes wreathed in curls of smoke.

“So, _Anzhelochka_ ,” he said, crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair, “my clever _volchitsa_. You sent a message to the outside? To Margaret Carter?”

Eyes stinging from the smoke, Angie nodded.

“What did you say?”

Angie swallowed, then said, “Coordinates. I sent her coordinates for our location.”

“And how did you know which coordinates to send?”

Here she paused and bit her lip. She would’ve preferred not to answer but – oh, God – Ivan was watching her and she couldn’t lie. Not to him. Not if her life depended on it, “Nikolay lets me go for walks. I saw maps in Oleg’s office.”

Ivan’s expression did not change, but there was a sudden stillness about him that sent a tremor down Angie’s spine.

“Please, don’t hurt him. He’s –” she grit her teeth and closed her eyes and forced herself to stop. Begging would only make things worse.

For a long moment in the tense silence, Ivan was still as a coiled serpent. Then with a jerky motion he was on his feet, and Angie was choking back a startled cry.

He didn’t touch her, only glared down, “Your friend is not coming for you, _Anzhelochka_. Your message failed. You will continue to work here until you are no longer of any use to me. And then you will die here. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she nodded furiously, choking back sobs, “Yes, I know.”

He waved his hand at Yelena, who moved forward to untie Angie and haul her to her – well… _foot._ Angie put her arm across Yelena’s shoulders so that she wouldn’t topple over. Yelena’s lip curled. Regardless she helped Angie hobble from the cell, carting her back to the workroom.

The sight of that workroom now – after a week of torture in a filthy cell – brought Angie near to tears. Nothing had looked so clean and bright and welcoming as all those grey walls, and grey blankets, and grey uniformed guards.

Nikolay was already gone, though. She tried not thinking about that too much.

Yelena dropped her into the chair behind her workbench, and left with only a low murmur to the guards. Sergei looked smug and insufferable, and other new guard just looked stony.

The very first thing Angie did in her newfound freedom – how funny, thinking that _this_ was freedom – was to wrap herself in that thick woollen blanket. It felt like her very own slice of heaven, that scratchy, old, smelly, wonderful, warm blanket. After a week of shivering herself to sleep on rags and hard concrete, she was sure that now she could die happy. Swaddled in a blanket a mile beneath the Russian permafrost.

Too soon, Sergei was tapping his rifle on her bench and pushing more of Stark’s plans at her. Fingers trembling, Angie took them

And she began to work.

At one point she dozed off, and was awoken by a smack to the back of her head from the new guard. She kept her eyes open just long enough to crawl over to her cot. There she curled up into a tiny ball, huddled in a mountain of blankets, and had what was easily the best sleep in her life.

When she woke up nine hours later, it was to a platter of the same old food, and the same old work. She could have cried for joy.

Thank God she wasn’t back in that cell.

Thank God she wasn’t working on a damn Cessna.

Could’ve done with a Corsair, though. Boy, she sure missed planes.

On her way to the cot that second night, Angie misjudged the distance between her bench and the floor. Her left leg gave a precarious wobble, and she scrambled at her chair. She only managed to grab the thin pillow from its seat before she was sent crashing down with a groan of pain.

The guards tensed, then moved forward. Sergei approached her with a sneer, aiming a kick at her stomach before leaning down to pick her up off the ground.

The last thing he expected was for a one-legged broken prisoner to jam a pencil so far into his eye that it hit the back of his skull. He was dead before he slumped onto the floor beside her.

Frantically Angie grabbed Sergei’s standard-issue Makarov pistol, held it up behind the pillow, and shot the other guard five times. He went down with two loud thumps, one from his knees, the other from his torso striking the ground.

Feathers drifted all around. Some caught in Angie’s hair. She gasped for air, chest heaving. Her hands shook so badly she thought she would drop the gun. Listening carefully, she heard no furious boot stomps in the hallway outside. At least the pillow had done its job and muffled most of the noise.

Clawing her way back into her seat, she pulled her latest project from the bench. She used her teeth to rip apart a few strips from her blanket and wad them up in the socket of the prosthetic she had hobbled together. Ideally she would’ve made a silicone lining from a cast of her stump to attach via suction. The knee had taken her a while to figure out, but it was the ankle that had given her the most trouble. Still it would allow her to run until she could think of something. She’d worry about those little details later. If she got out of here alive.

Strapping the harness to her thigh, Angie stood and tested the limb for the first time. The ankle flexed beneath her weight, giving a small springing step when she lurched forward onto her other foot.

Huh. Maybe Howard had a point. Maybe she did have a future in his Robotics Program after all.

Of course that was right when her luck decided to run out. Again.

Two more guards entered the room. One carried a tray of food, and the other spoke jovially with his friend. Both of them froze when they realised what had happened.

Damn. Of course she’d forgotten about dinner. Damn. Damn. _Damn._ Of all the stupid, simple, obvious things to forget –

The tray of food clattered to the ground, and both guards scrambled for the rifles on their backs. Trembling, Angie raised the pistol and fired. One guard down. But then –

- _C_ _lick_.

Eight bullets. That was it. Her gun was empty, and the next nearest was on the floor, and the remaining guard was aiming down his sights and –

Angie was sure she was going to die right then and there. She had her eyes squeezed shut in preparation and everything. Instead of a gunshot, though, she heard a body hit the floor. When she opened one eye to peek, it was to find Yelena Belova standing in the doorway, staring down at four dead guards at her feet, blood dripping from a knife in her hand.

All the breath left Angie in a relieved, audible whoosh, “Jesus H. Christ! Took you long enough!”

Yelena tsked and cleaned her knife on one of the guard’s jackets before sheathing it, “If you hadn’t been caught, this never would have happened.”

“Well, excuse me!” Angie snapped, voice thick with unshed tears, “Not all of us can be as great as you, Miss Super Spy!”

Rather than reply, Yelena put a hand to her ear and murmured into the piece there, “Gelato acquired.”

Angie scrubbed at her eyes and knelt down to loot the corpses for ammunition, “Really? _Gelato?_   That’s my call sign? Whose bright idea was that?”

Yelena smiled and said sweetly, “Mine. I wanted Peggy’s to be _‘Maraschino’_ but she refused.”

“What would that make you then? _Banana Split?”_ Angie growled, staggering upright and making her way to the door.

Yelena’s smile broadened, revealing sharp glittering teeth, “ _Sunday Bar Customer.”_

Ok. _Yikes._

“Just –” Angie pinched the bridge of her nose, “-get me out of here.”

Yelena huffed, but turned to leave, “Oh, fine. Right when things were starting to get interesting.”

Alright, so, maybe Angie hadn’t been completely, one hundred percent honest with Ivan. She may have told a few lies. One or two. Maybe.

Alright, maybe a lot of lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mmmmmmmm whatchya saaaaay~


	7. Matryoshka: Part 2

Peggy knew this was a bad idea from the very start. She never should have sent Angie to Russia.

After Howard’s party, she had expected Angie to beg, to needle, and nag. She’d even steeled herself for it, marching around work and their penthouse apartment as though waiting for a bomb to drop.

And then it had.

But not in the sense that she could have ever imagined.

On the second day after Howard’s Party, Peggy wandered home in a state of shock. Whatever _guerre froide_ that had been going on between her and Angie quickly evaporated when Angie saw the look on her face as she walked through the door.

“What happened?” Angie asked softly.

Peggy sank down onto the couch in their living room, and though she kept the tremor out of her voice, she couldn’t keep it from her hands, “The Russians –” she cleared her throat and continued, “The Russians have the hydrogen bomb.”

For a moment Peggy just stared straight ahead, her fingers tapping a restless staccato rhythm against her thigh to mask the shaking. Then Angie crossed the room and sat beside her, “I’d like to say I know how you feel,” she murmured, taking Peggy’s hand and lacing their fingers together, “but somehow I think that cousin Ralphie getting hit by a bus doesn’t have quite the same gravitas. It’d kind of demean the situation, you know?”

Huffing out a watery laugh, Peggy gripped Angie’s hand tight. How funny. She thought Angie was going to be the one to bring up the topic of Russia, of wanting to go, of wanting to help. Oh, how wrong she was.

Knuckles flashing white, Peggy did not look around, knowing she couldn’t stand to look at Angie and ask what needed to be asked.

What a coward she was. What a God-awful coward.

Lord, but she needed a smoke.

Instead she breathed in deeply, “Angie, are you still interested in infiltrating Russia?”

Angie’s response was to stroke her thumb across the back of Peggy’s hand, and it was too much. Peggy pulled her hand away and lurched to her feet. She made her way over to a nearby corner table and fumbled inside the drawer for a packet of cigarettes. She almost dropped the lighter in her haste, the flint and steel wheel sparking under her thumb. Cigarette lit, she took a long hard drag, relishing the burn in her lungs.

She could feel Angie’s gaze on her back. “Do you want me to go to Russia?”

_Of course not._

_I would never ask you to-_

_I would never put you in that sort of-_

But instead, Peggy exhaled a narrow plume of smoke that stretched out like a pale white wing, “I need to know what exactly they know. I need enough information to take down key members of the Party. I need someone I trust on the inside so that I can mitigate this threat before it escalates out of control.”

She already had men on the inside. She had men everywhere. SHIELD’s extensive spy network was rivalled only by GRU’s. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

Footsteps behind her. Angie’s hand on the small of her waist. A soothing gentle pressure there. And then, “I can do that.”

Peggy closed her eyes and raised the cigarette to her lips with shaking fingertips.

That was exactly the sort of foolish, selfless, heroic thing she was afraid Angie would say.

 

* * *

 

“We only have a gap of two days to get you into Russia,” Peggy said as she walked, “So we’ll have to move fast.

Angie was trailing behind her, looking all around them. It was her first time visiting ‘The Office’ as she referred to it. For years Peggy had been loath to let Angie step foot on the premises, but – well, here they were. It didn’t matter anymore.

SHIELD agents scurried by, sparing the two a brief respectful wave before ducking back to work. It had taken Peggy ages to train them all not to salute. The younger crowd were easier to train in that regard, whereas those veterans who had been in the war were near impossible. One even caught himself halfway to a salute before she shot him a warning look, and his arm snapped back down to his side. On the days she had to wear her old Colonel’s uniform – yes, she still had to wear it on some special occasions; bloody politicians and media representatives were head over heels for a bit of uniform and brass – it really was impossible to stop the veterans from saluting.

Fair enough too, she reckoned. It wasn’t like she could expect years of instilled training to just leap out the nearest window at her say so.

Together they walked into Peggy’s office. Inside two people waited for them. As soon as the door was shut, Peggy drew the curtains and gestured to the others, “Angie, you remember Ida.”

The woman in question was halfway perched atop the corner of Peggy’s desk, giving the rest of the room a generous view of her legs, “Hi, there!” she flashed a grin and fluttered her fingers in Angie’s direction with a sly wink.

“Off,” Peggy snapped.

Pouting, she slid from the desk and made her way to the spare chair. The other chair was occupied by Howard, who of course warranted no introduction.

“Ida is only one of her aliases,” Peggy’s explanation was curt and simple, “You will also come to know her as Dorothy ‘Dottie’ Underwood, and Yelena Belova.”

Angie cocked an eyebrow, “Let me guess: Russian?”

Yelena shrugged, “I have my own reasons for wanting to see certain members of the Party dead.”

Peggy moved around her desk to sit in her chair, “We aren’t assassins. I only want them ruined and made political pariahs.

“Dead’s as good as ruined,” Yelena pointed out, her tone sickly sweet. Her grin only widened when Peggy gave her a reproachful look.

Angie had an expression on her face that hovered somewhere between horrified and utterly perplexed.

“Yelena has been working with us for some time. I do not doubt her loyalties. Much,” Peggy added the last as a dark mutter. Yelena brightened and beamed as though given a great compliment.

It was true, after all. Though Peggy refrained from elaborating on how they’d had a good go at killing one another before they came to a truce, and decided to work against a common enemy. An idiom rattled around in her head, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Something about keeping enemies closer? Or was it: an enemy of my enemy?

Regardless, Yelena, while not exactly the most _stalwart_ of allies, was an ally nonetheless. Though a conditional one, at best. If Yelena were a legal document, she would come with enough fine print to employ a law firm for a few generations.

“Have I mentioned -?” Howard began.

Peggy fixed him with a glare, “You know the rules of my office, Howard. Or need we have a repeat performance of the Great Flamethrower Incident of 1948?”

With a petulant scowl, Howard raised his hand.

Peggy leaned back in her seat and waved at him, “You may now speak.”

Lowering his hand, he said, “First of all it was a flame fougasse, not a flamethrower. Secondly: Have I mentioned I don't like this?”

“Is that because it involves the apparent theft of your technology? Or is it because you were unaware that your date, Ida Emke, was a double agent working for me?”

“Both,” he grumbled back.

“And yet you have absolutely no qualms about sending an untrained civilian into the enemy’s hands?” Peggy pressed.

At that he at least had the decency to look sheepish, “Also yes.” He gave Angie, who was still standing near the doorway, an apologetic smile.

Angie just rolled her eyes, “Gee, thanks.”

Peggy pulled a file from her desk, “Angie, you will pretend to be one of Stark’s associates, taken in by Yelena along with a shipment of stolen equipment. Yelena and Oleg Penkovsky, our other agent, will make sure you get inside.” She flipped the file open and pushed it across the desk, “You’ll want to read over that carefully to get your story straight.”

Of course, she knew that Angie had an eidetic memory and could retain the information on the back of a random cereal box for years after only seeing it once in a grocery store, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Peggy was worried, and her worry was only somewhat relieved when Angie made a show of picking up the file and reading over it studiously. Bless her.

“What plane will we be flying in?” Angie asked.

Of course that would be her first question.

Yelena opened her mouth to reply, but before she could do so, Peggy said, “Don’t answer that.”

When Angie pouted at her, Peggy just reached over the desk to tap the file in her hands, “Focus more on this. Less on the aircraft variant and its engine capabilities."

Grumbling something about the importance of engine specifications, Angie nonetheless buried her nose back in the file.

“Should we -?” Howard started, then clamped his mouth shut and raised his hand with a surly tilt to his moustache. He only continued once Peggy nodded at him, “Should we implant her with the device now?”

At that Angie lowered the file with a jerk and said, “What device? What do you mean: _implant?”_ then she aimed an incredulous look at Peggy, “Why wasn’t I told about this earlier?”

Clearing her throat, Peggy fought back the urge to sink lower into her chair, instead straightening her back with a flick of her hair over one shoulder, “We implant all of our field operatives with a small transmitter beneath the skin of the leg. It lets us monitor your whereabouts and your heartbeat. In case you –” she choked on the word ‘die’ substituting it with, “-get lost.”

Howard and Yelena shared dubious glances.

Meanwhile Angie’s eyes narrowed, “You know how much I hate needles.”

“I know, darling. It won’t take but a moment.” Peggy assured her.

Howard raised his hand.

With a sigh Peggy nodded at him.

“So are we doing that now?” he asked again.

“Yes, yes,” she waved at him, “Go take her to your little lab.”

Eagerly he stood, slipping his arm around Angie’s waist and leading her from the office, “Come on! I want to show you the new alloy I’ve just discovered! It’s a mixture of adamantium and vibranium. Cost me a fortune – but I can afford it.”

“Ooh!” Angie went along with a bounce in her step, tucking the file under her arm, “Did you manage to get around that durability issue?”

“Even better – I was able to preserve the kinetic absorption in the Wakandan isotope.”

Peggy never would have thought that those two would get along as well as they did, but life was full of all kinds of surprises, it seemed. Yelena rose and made to leave as well, but Peggy stopped her in the doorway with a firm hand on her arm.

“If she dies, I _will_ kill you this time,” she said, voice low, red fingernails grazing the soft underbelly of Yelena’s forearm like a warning.

Where anyone else might have wilted, Yelena’s eyes sparkled. She leaned in close enough that Peggy could smell the faint hint of perfume and something else, something dark and oily, like black carbon rubbed from the barrel of a used gun, “Is that a promise?” she purred, pupils dilated.

She look _piqued_.

Peggy let go of her and was barely able to keep a sneer from stealing across her features. Yelena hummed a throaty laugh, shooting a sweltry look over her shoulder as she left. Taking a deep breath, Peggy went after Angie and Howard.

Later that evening in their apartment Angie was picking at the raised skin of her inner thigh while she sat in bed, reading over her file. Her pretty mouth twisted in irritation, and Peggy would be lying if she’d said she wasn’t staring. Her fingers itched as though for a cigarette while she studied the slope of Angie’s cheek, the curve of her neck, the brush of fabric over her knees.

“You shouldn’t pick at that,” Peggy pointed out, “It needs to heal.”

Angie’s face screwed up into a delightful grimace. Peggy couldn’t recall ever thinking a grimace could be delightful, but this definitely was, “It itches.”

“Shall I kiss it all better?”

That was quite possibly the worst come-on Peggy had said in her entire life. But it made Angie laugh. And that was worth it thrice over.

Angie’s knees splayed apart above the sheets, and she made some dirty joke about nurses or doctors. To be honest Peggy wasn’t really listening at that point. She was too busy trailing a sequence of nips and open-mouthed kisses up Angie’s thighs, concentrating on the small pleased murmurs and Angie’s fingers tangling in her hair.

It started off playful and slow, but it didn’t end that way. No, it ended with her teeth fastened at Angie’s throat, fingers buried in slick heat, thumb pressed against her clit, and Angie gasping a feeble cry, head wrenched back against the mussed pillows.

In that moment Peggy wanted to snarl and growl and beg and plead all at once.

_Don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave. Please, don’t –_

Instead she pressed harder, one hand trailing up Angie’s sweat-slicked chest, until Angie came again. Then again once more. The whole thing reeked of desperation, and Peggy hated herself for it.

“You’ll be fine,” she whispered into the smooth plane of a shoulder as Angie’s body shuddered to a grinding halt, “You’ll be fine.”

God, she hated of herself for it.

And of course Angie did leave. Because she’d asked her to. Because she needed her to. Because she couldn’t beg her to stay, even when she should have.

In the months after Angie’s departure, Peggy felt groundless, aimless. She remembered her first week away from the Army. She would wake up at 05 00 sharp, and do all of her work by 10 00. Then she would spend two hours staring at the perfect stack of papers on her desk, and the perfect taut sheets of her bed, and contemplate what else she was supposed to do with all her time.

Back then time felt so full and all-encompassing. This inescapable thing that filled up the space between activities and felt so wasted. And that was exactly how it felt now. More so when she found out Angie had been caught with only two weeks left to go in her mission.

Peggy had been in a meeting concerning the deployment of Exercise Mainbrace – Lord, but Ridgway could be a long-winded bastard at times – when Howard stuck his head into the room.

Noticing the ashen look on his face, she frowned, “What is it, Howard?”

His eyes darted nervously, and then he just said, “They have her.”

All the breath caught in her chest then, stuttering to a halt. She left the meeting right then and there, rushing to her office. Pulling the transmitter out, she heaved an audible gasp of relief when she found it still pulsing with Angie’s heartbeat.

Faster than normal. Too fast. But alive.

“Get Sousa in here,” she ordered, already picking up the phone on her desk, “I want a tactical team ready for extraction in Russia within the next forty-eight hours.”

Before her fingers could complete the numbers for a call, Howard was lunging across the desk and pressing down the cradle, “We can’t do that, Peg! Think about the repercussions! If we drop in a tactical team with guns blazing, this whole thing could blow. Russia. The U.S. All of it!”

“To hell with that!” Peggy snarled, smashing down the receiver so hard it made the table rattle, “I want her out of there _now!_ She never should have gone in the first place! I _told_ you she wouldn’t be able to handle this, Howard!”

“Then why send her, huh?” he countered, resting his fists on the desk and leaning forward, “Because last I looked, that one was on you!”

She wanted to smash his face in with the lamp on her desk. Teeth bared, she picked up the lamp in question and hurled it across the room, where it shattered against the opposite wall. It felt irrevocably childish, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

If anything Howard looked sympathetic. Pitying.

God, she wanted to –

She needed to –

Breathing heavily, she groped for the packet of cigarettes she kept in her desk drawer in case of emergencies. If this didn’t constitute an emergency, then she didn’t know what did. Smoking didn’t make her feel better, but at least it felt like doing _something._

“How long will it take to assemble a team and drop into Russia without causing an international nuclear fiasco?” she asked, mumbling around the cigarette in her mouth while she flicked the silvery lighter with shaking fingers.

Howard lifted his arms in a helpless shrug, “The best we can do is two weeks.”

She inhaled and the tip of the cigarette burned ember-bright. Slamming the lighter down onto the desk, she snapped, “Make it one week.”

He started to object, but she cut him off with a dark, ugly look that made him take a step back, “Make it one week,” she repeated through clenched teeth, “Or I’ll launch the nuclear missiles myself.”

Swallowing thickly, he nodded and left, but not before tugging the window curtains closed, shielding her from the rest of the office.

The door shut behind him with a gentle click, and she sank down into her chair. From her fingertips the cigarette trembled. She raised it to her mouth, and watched the transmitter tick in time with Angie’s heartbeat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost typed "your date, Ida Emke" as "our date, Ida Emke." Whoops. Freudian slip, much?


	8. Box Man

 

_Box Man - A standard position of the body used when skydiving/parachuting._

 

* * *

 

 

The day Angie’s transmitter flat-lined, Peggy felt the ground give way beneath her feet. In both the literal and metaphorical sense. The earth seemed to crumble like loose stones toppling from a wall, and the next thing she knew she was sitting on the cot in her office, numb.

She had erected the cot after the first night of Angie’s capture. After going home to that big empty apartment, she had taken one look around at all of Angie’s things – still lying there, untouched, as though she would return at any moment – and immediately Peggy had gone back to her office at SHIELD. At least there she wasn’t haunted by all of Angie’s personal belongings. At least there the constant tick of Angie’s heartbeat gave some small lulling sense of reassurance.

Until suddenly it didn’t.

That was how Sousa found her hours later, staring at the transmitter with a blank expression, still in the same rumpled clothes she had worn all that week. Her face was pale and drawn, mouth a soft fleshy pink rather than its usual devil-may-care shade of red. He froze in the doorway, glanced at the dead transmitter and the lank curls hanging loose around her jaw, then dragged her to her feet.

“Come on,” he murmured, and while his voice was gentle, his grip was firm.

He led her to the women’s dressing room down the hall – thankfully empty, despite Peggy’s attempts to increase the number of female agents and recruits – and pushed her into a cold shower, shoes and clothes and all. When she spluttered and rounded on him, rage a living thing in her eyes, he looked relieved.

“You scared me there for a minute, Director Carter,” he offered a wan, vaguely apologetic smile, “Now you clean up and come out when you’re ready. In the meantime I’ll get a hold of Penkovsky and find out the real story.”

Peggy pushed a sodden curl from her brow, blouse sticking to her arms. “You could have at least made it a hot shower, Daniel,” she grumbled as she turned the tap to a warmer temperature.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll remember that for next time.” His smile faltered and he looked like he was going to reach out and touch her, but then stopped, “We don’t know she’s dead. Not for sure.”

For a moment Peggy said nothing. Just looked away, arms wrapping around her stomach, “Thank you. That will be all, Agent Sousa.”

He nodded and left when she started unzipping her skirt and stripping down.

Poor man. She really should give him a pay raise.

Objectively it was a silly thing to contemplate at such a time. By all accounts Angie was dead, and Peggy’s Balenciaga shoes were ruined. Yet there she was, fussing with the buttons of her wet blouse, already drafting up in her head a report for the HR team on why Agent Daniel Sousa deserved a pay raise. Four per cent should do it.

Practical, achievable goals kept her grounded. Kept the stones beneath her feet from crumbling away. Things like pay raises. Drying herself off and searching her locker for the spare set of clothes she kept there. Applying a fresh coat of lipstick. Stoutly ignoring the way her hands trembled all the while.

On the walk back to her office, she wondered at the sheer normalcy of everyone else’s actions. There went Agent Jackson, off to investigate a lead on his Hampton case, no doubt. And there Agent Reyes joked with Agent Nguyen over their coffees. Meanwhile Peggy drifted by them like a ghost, unseen.

Sousa was on the phone in her office. When she entered, shutting the door softly behind her, he glanced up and gave her an encouraging nod. Putting his hand over the receiver, he whispered, “She’s alive.”

Oh, thank God.

It was only then that Peggy had to choke back tears. She put a hand over her mouth and leaned against the door. As she gathered herself, Sousa deliberately turned to face the other direction, phone still held up to his ear. But the time he hung up, she was straightening her jacket with quick little tugs, and rolling her shoulders.

“What’s the news?” she asked, moving briskly to sit behind her desk.

“One of the devices she was ‘working on’ caused interference with her transmitter,” he paused, reluctant to say more.

Peggy fixed him with a stern glance, “That’s how she got caught – I already know. What about her transmitter this morning?”

Daniel shuffled awkwardly, avoiding her gaze, “Ivan Serov cut off her leg. The one implanted with the transmitter.”

Peggy’s hands clenched around the arms of her broad-backed chair, leather creaking beneath her white-knuckled grip, “Did he know about the transmitter in her leg? Or did he cut it off just to torture her?”

“As far as we can tell, just to torture her,” Daniel chewed the inside of his cheek, “He still believes her story.”

Lips pursing into a thin red line like a scar, Peggy ordered, “Assemble the tactical team on standby. I want them ready to move out in six hours.”

He did not hesitate, not with an order from her, but he did say, “Mr. Stark’s not going to like that you’re pre-empting the mission by twelve hours.”

“Leave Howard to me,” she rose from her seat and strode to the door, “And if anyone calls in the next forty-eight hours, tell them I’m overseas on business.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

If anyone thought Peggy would wait around at SHIELD headquarters twiddling her thumbs while Angie was being rescued, they had another thing coming. Not that Howard didn’t try, and he did. Though after the look at her face after his suggestion, he suddenly remembered a very urgent project in his lab that required his attention, and away he scuttled like a moustachioed crab.

Yelena on the other hand was thrilled.

“Just like old times,” her voice crackled through her mic when she discovered Peggy was en route to the NKVD facility along with the rest of the tactical team.

Peggy refrained from pointing out that their supposedly jolly old times had consisted of them trying to beat one another to death with a baseball bat. (Yet another incident Angie didn’t need to know about, though she had been rather annoyed to discover her baseball ball snapped in half after that so-called ‘mysterious home invasion’ six years ago).

Peggy parachuted into Russia with eight other members of SHIELD from a plane that she was sure Angie could have told her all the specifications of, including its lengthy pedigree and ways to drastically improve its performance. And of course the fact that Angie was not there to babble in her ear only made Peggy that much more – _more._

Honestly she would have liked to have been able to pin down any one emotion, but her torso felt like a volatile cocktail best left undisturbed. So, just more _more_.

As she leapt from the plane’s open hatch, she swore that she would listen to every tiny gushing detail about the aircraft Angie would undoubtedly spew on their trip back home. Because she _was_ getting Angie out of there, God dammit, if it was the last thing she did on this sorry earth.

While Peggy would have preferred to kick down the door and blow this hell-hole to Kingdom Come, the tactical team did, in fact, have a stealth priority. Which meant full face masks, goggles, and enough high-tech Stark equipment to make any government agency salivate. Luck willing, they wouldn’t have to actually use any of that equipment. In sturdy boots and body armour, shouldering an M-3 submachine gun, Peggy felt more at home in her own skin than she had in ages.

They attacked in the dead of night, slipping in right through the front door when the guards changed shifts. The new shift didn’t even have enough time to hunker down against the cold before they were slumped on the ground, wide sprays of red swathing the snow as nine figures in dappled white and grey camouflage swept in from the treeline. That gave the team two hours. Plenty of time for an extraction.

Not that an extraction was the only thing on Peggy’s agenda. But there would be plenty of time for _that_ too.

Four members of the team remained outside to cover the escape route, while the other five fanned out inside. Through the winding labyrinth of underground tunnels they crept, caged bluish lights flickering along the grey walls. A junior officer rounded ne corner, but before he could open his mouth to sound an alarm, Peggy had her arms locked around his neck. A twist and – _snap_. She dragged his body into a nearby electrical closet while the others watched her back. Then they forged onward in silence.

At one point the team had to huddle together in a dark spare room while a set of two guards tramped by, bearing a tray of food and exchanging light-hearted conversation. Not long after they passed, Peggy heard a sound like muffled gunshots. 

Yelena's voice buzzed in her ear. A simple, " _Gelato acquired._ "

Peggy rolled her eyes. They hadn't agreed on call signs. Especially not when Peggy heard what  _hers_ was supposed to be. What else was a woman to do but balk at a call sign like  _'Maraschino'?_  

Giving the others a signal, she emerged from their hiding place, weapons at the ready, coming face to face with –

-Angie.

Peggy froze. She had expected to feel relieved when she finally saw Angie again, but she hadn’t expected it to be so staggering, like a physical blow to the chest. Angie looked so gaunt, gripping Yelena’s arm, fear painted in broad strokes across her face. Peggy could only stare until she realised that of course Angie didn’t recognise her.

“Damn,” she muttered, reaching up to peel down the face mask and goggles, revealing her face.

Yelena lowered her gun – Peggy hadn’t even noticed that Yelena had been pointing a gun at her – and grinned, “Maraschino! You made it! I thought we were meeting you outside?”

“Don’t call me that,” Peggy growled, “And you are meeting me outside. In an hour. These four will escort you to the surface.”

Even while she spoke to Yelena, her eyes never left Angie. Angie, whose mouth had dropped slightly open. Angie, who teetered atop a metallic multi-jointed contraption instead of a leg. Peggy wanted to rush over and scoop her up into an embrace. Instead, she settled with reaching out and clasping Angie’s upper arm, squeezing lightly. It wasn’t much, but at least it was something tangible, something _real_.

“And where will you be heading?” Yelena asked, cocking her head.

“Ivan Serov and I have unfinished business,” Peggy’s hand tightened around her M-3. She noticed the way Angie flinched at the mention of his name, and wrath flared in her stomach, roaring yellow and orange like a bellows.

Yelena’s gaze grew steely even as her smile widened, “Now is not the time for that.” When Peggy shot her an ugly look, she rolled her eyes, “Yes, I know I’m one to talk.”

“He is a liability,” Peggy hissed, “He must be dealt with. _Now_.”

“Do you have all the information you need?” Yelena asked, her smile gone.

Peggy grit her teeth, “I have enough to take down Abakumov and Beria by implicating them in the Doctor’s Plot.”

She hated the fact that even while Angie was in captivity and being tortured for a week, Peggy had still been keeping up with all her operations, using the information Angie had gathered. She played God with other peoples’ lives when Angie toiled in the darkness of a cell, when she should have been saving her instead of doing the job. Because that was it all came down to, wasn’t it? The Job.

Yelena put her arm around Angie’s shoulders as if to mock Peggy and said, “Then he can wait.”

Peggy’s face must have given something away, because Yelena leaned forward and her voice was low, “If you kill him here and now, then they will know. The Party will have no choice but to retaliate in order to save face. And all that we’ve worked for these last six years will be for nothing.”

Damn her. Damn her for being right.

Swearing under her breath, Peggy yanked her face mask back into place, “Let’s go,” she snapped gruffly.

Ivan would have to wait. One day, though. Peggy lifted her submachine gun and took point as they headed out and up. _One day._

She almost wished more guards would stumble across them on patrol. She was raging for a fight. None did, however. In fact, they managed to sneak away without any further casualties, taking the time to hide the bodies of the guards at the front door. It would only be a matter of hours until they were found, but a few hours could mean lives spared on the ground. The others in the team couldn’t believe their luck as they all tramped back through the snow towards their designated exit point.

Angie’s makeshift prosthetic creaked and she fought back a grimace with every step, biting her lip as the still raw limb rubbed against its socket fitting. Peggy could not help but notice as she tried keeping her attention forward, stumbling through the slush to the truck waiting for them. It wasn’t far off, but Angie laboured all the same. At one point Yelena – still half carrying her – shrugged off her jacket and draped it over Angie’s shivering shoulders. As she did so she smirked at Peggy over the top of Angie’s head.

The hot blast of anger through Peggy’s veins made her burn up with shame.

Jealousy? Really? At a time like this? Pull yourself together, Carter.

At last they all piled into the truck, leaving Yelena behind to return to the facility and cover their tracks.

“Catch you later, Peggy. It’s been fun.” she gave an arch wave and a wink before turning and striding back through the snow.

Peggy did not return the gesture.

The truck lurched into motion, and the rest of the team all stamped the snow from their boots, tugging their facemasks down. Their shoulders all jostled together as the truck lumbered towards the nearest airstrip, where they were meeting their pilot. The others all began congratulating themselves – almost incredulously – on an extraction well done.

Meanwhile Peggy watched Angie curl up into a tiny ball beneath Yelena’s greatcoat, falling asleep almost instantly in the furthest corner of the covered truck bed. The metallic prosthetic leg peeked out from beneath the coat’s hems, glistening with crushed ice.

Peggy did not wake her until they reached the airstrip. Then she smoothed back the tangle of brassy hair from Angie’s brow and reluctantly nudged her awake. With a groggy recoil, Angie cringed before she realised who it was. Seeing it was Peggy, she relaxed and let herself be pulled upright. Peggy put her arm around Angie's waist, trying and failing to not dig her fingers into Angie's hip. A desperate clingy gesture while they shuffled together out of the truck.

As they clambered into the aircraft, Angie’s bleary eyes brightened, “Oooh! A C-46D Commando!” She gushed weakly, arm wrapped around Peggy’s shoulders for support as they made their way into the plane’s belly.

At that Peggy allowed herself a small breathy relieved laugh. She pulled Angie closer and pressed a kiss to her temple, “Tell me all about it, won’t you darling?”


	9. Hook Knife

_Hook Knife - a special knife used in skydiving to cut away from the parachute in case of emergencies._

 

* * *

 

 

Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin was dead. It was 1953. Nikita Khrushchev was battling a fading Malenkov for power in the Soviet Union. Lavrentiy Beria and Viktor Abakumov were awaiting trial and execution.

And Peggy owed it all to Angie.

Well, that may have been a bit misleading. Angie’s intel hadn’t been instrumental in Stalin’s death – that had been completely natural despite rampant rumours to the contrary. However, her intel had led to the downfall of Malenkov and Beria and Abakumov – members of the Party Peggy had been chasing for years since the end of the War.

By all accounts 1953 should have been a triumph, a notch in Peggy’s metaphorical belt – if it weren’t so gauche for her to have such a thing.

Then why did it feel like such a waste?

Peggy chewed her lower lip, a terrible habit of hers ever since she was a girl – one her strict school teachers had tried caning out of her to no avail. She sat in the spacious lounge of their penthouse apartment, ankles crossed, perched on the edge of the leather couch. Twisting her fingers together, she mused, a furrow in her brow.

Among all those victories, losses and loose ends plagued her. Ivan Serov managed to cleave to power during the struggle after Stalin’s death. Peggy knew because she kept his file close by. Her double agent, Penkovsky, remained at Serov’s side, and there he would stay until Peggy said otherwise. She wanted eyes on Serov at all times. She wanted to know when to expect a slip-up, an opening, anything and everything. And until such an opportunity arose, she would wait.

Ivan Serov wasn’t the only loose end, though. Yelena was prime among them. As soon as Khrushchev started to gain the upper hand and clean house, Yelena had disappeared. Just vanished into thin air. Even with all of SHIELD’s resources at her disposal, Peggy could not track her down.

She had no doubt that Yelena/Dottie/Ida was alive. The woman had a habit of surviving anything. Like a cockroach.

And Yelena wasn’t the only one to disappear from the social scene.

For the first month after their return from Russia, Angie refused to leave the apartment. On and on she languished, interred amongst all her things, as though surrounding herself with her old possessions would allow her to leech her previous life out of them. Her life before Russia. She would keep all the windows and curtains open, moving from sunny spot to sunny spot like a lounging cat.

That whole month Peggy worried and fretted constantly. Even Howard noticed.

“She already has a mother, Peg,” he groaned when she mentioned it yet again, and then he had to dodge the empty ashtray she chucked at him from across her office.

“Hand, Howard! You know the rules!”

“I’m standing in the doorway! It doesn’t count!”

It pained her to admit that he was right. About Angie. Not about the doorway. That was just foolish. Liminal spaces in no way precluded her right to hurl random office supplies at him as she pleased.

The only problem was that giving Angie space had never been one of Peggy’s strong suits. She had tried that back in 1944, and discovered that two days was about the limit. At which point she cracked and basically grovelled on her hands and knees, begging Angie to come with her to New York.

At least – that was how Peggy remembered it.

In retrospect Angie’s month of mental and physical recovery seemed perfectly acceptable. Three months locked away in an NKVD facility could change a person. One week of torture could change a person.

The first time she set foot back outside the apartment, Angie had insisted on going out to lunch.

“Honestly, English, if I have to suffer through one more of your boiled meals, I’ll fling myself from the balcony,” was her excuse as she fixed her mascara in the vanity mirror.

At that Peggy huffed. Her cooking wasn’t _that_ terrible.

Granted it was pretty terrible.

Still, she agreed. Admittedly she’d been surprised by Angie’s insistence. One moment Angie was unable to sleep properly, wandering the hallways at night – one foot shuffling, the other scraping and clicking. The next moment she was practically pulling Peggy out the door and jamming her finger on the lobby floor button in the elevator.

Peggy did notice that Angie clutched her arm the whole way down and during the whole walk to the diner down the street, though. She disguised it well. Anyone passing them on the street would have just thought they were good friends walking arm-in-arm. Rather than one leaning on the other for support to hide the fact that she limped with every step, face fixed against a wince.

While at the diner, however, Peggy could almost forget about the last year. Almost. They sat in a booth by the window, so that Angie was bathed in the afternoon glow. They ordered food, and ate, and people watched, and chatted, and it was like nothing had happened. For maybe an hour, they existed in a little bubble of solitude, and the world felt right again at last.

Until the bell at the door chimed, and a new customer arrived.

Peggy glanced at him, dismissing him in a moment. From his walk and the way he held himself, she could tell he bore no weapons nor would he prove himself a threat.

Angie, on the other hand, froze. Her fork clattered to the table, and she seemed to shrink in on herself so that she occupied as small a space as possible.

Suddenly alert, Peggy’s gaze flicked back to the newcomer. And she realised – He looked like Ivan Serov. Only vaguely. Peripherally. Like the shade of Ivan Serov, the memory of him a lingering acidic taste in the back of the mouth.

Peggy reached out to take her hand, but Angie flinched.

“Do you want to leave?” Peggy asked, keeping her voice calm and even.

Licking her lips, eyes darting nervously, Angie nodded.

As they rose from their both, not once did Angie take her eyes from the man. If he noticed, he did not show it, minding his own business at the table near the opposite end of the diner. Peggy threw down too many bills for their meal, and all seemed to be going smoothly until they reached the door. There Angie yanked so hard on the handle that it broke clean off.

Everyone in the diner turned to stare. Including the Ivan Serov look-alike. Hands shaking furiously, Angie tried putting the handle back in place, near tears, muttering over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry –”

Placing her hand on the small of Angie’s back, Peggy took the handle from her and murmured, “It’s alright. Give it here.”

“I didn’t mean to -! It just came off -!”

“I know,” Peggy pulled the handle from her and gave it to a waitress hovering nearby, “I’ll pay for that later.”

But the waitress just waved them away, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell the boss a cyclist ran into it and sped off.”

“Thank you,” Peggy offered a smile, and led Angie away.

Back at the apartment Angie perched herself atop a section of countertop in the kitchen, where a swath of brilliant sunlight warmed the pale marble. There she lifted her skirts around her waist and unhooked the prosthetic from her leg. It was the same one she’d made back in Russia. ‘Durable and mean’ she called it.

She turned the limb over in her hand with a thoughtful scowl. She had tripped twice on the way back from the diner. Had Peggy not been there, she would have almost certainly fallen flat on her face in the middle of the street.

“Can I come into the office with you tomorrow?” she asked, fiddling with one of the joints, “I’d like to speak to Howard.”

From where she leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, Peggy replied, “Of course.”

Truthfully she was just relieved Angie no longer looked so panicked. If anything, she seemed determined. There was a steely set to her jaw that Peggy normally only saw when they argued, or when Angie watched a particularly tense baseball game.

The next day Angie joined her on the commute to SHIELD’s headquarters, both of them chatting idly on the subway while they held onto the railing, shoulders jostling. When they popped into Howard’s lab, the man lit up like a Christmas tree. Together he and Angie babbled about some new invention or another, while Peggy’s eyes glazed over.

Perhaps that wasn’t completely honest. Initially her eyes glazed over, but then she studied Angie’s animated profile when she thought they were no longer paying attention to her. She was jerked from her reverie by a clearing of a throat. Blinking, she realised they were now both staring at her expectantly.

“Pardon?” Peggy asked.

“Don’t you have work to do?” Howard smirked.

“Right. Of course,” she turned to leave, “You two have fun. And do try not to blow up the East Wing this time.”

As she strode away, she heard Angie ask, “You blew up the East Wing?”

“Peggy loves to exaggerate.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

By the end of the day, Peggy swung back around to find them hunched over a workbench. When they looked up at her arrival, they both wore identical welding helmets and thick leather gloves. The cascade of sparks that had been shooting up all around them came to a halt.

“Hi there!” Angie lifted her mask to reveal a scorch-marked face cut with a bright grin, “Gosh, is that the time already?”

“I thought it was lunch time?” Howard’s exclamation was muffled through his mask.

“More like dinner time,” Angie rose and starting stripping off all her protective gear, “Same time tomorrow, Howard?”

“You know where to find me,” he said, bending back over and sending up a fresh wave of sparks.

Peggy admired the bounce of Angie’s hair, the happy hum in her throat as they walked arm-in-arm back to the station, “What are you two working on?”

Rather than answer, Angie mimed locking her mouth and throwing away the key.

With a snort, Peggy nudged Angie with her shoulder, and almost sent her sprawling, “Oh! I’m sorry!”

God, she was an idiot. Sometimes it was too easy to forget that – while Angie could still walk around and function relatively normally – that she was missing a limb. Unlike Daniel, whom Peggy had only ever known as an amputee, in her mind Angie existed whole and unscarred.

Angie just pulled herself upright by clutching at Peggy’s arm. Though she aimed a swift jab to Peggy’s ribs for good measure.

“I’m a genius, you dolt, but my prosthetic ain’t perfect yet,” she snarked.

“Fair enough,” Peggy wheezed, rubbing at her ribs, “Are you sure you don’t have a metal elbow as well?”

Angie would have elbowed her again but for the fact that their train arrived, and the swarm of people during rush hour pressed in all around them

The next day Angie went back into the office with her. And the next day. And the next. A few months later, and Howard swanned by Peggy’s office with his arm around Angie’s shoulders to announce that he’d successfully convinced her to lead his Robotics Program team.

“I’m the only member,” Angie reminded him with a roll of her eyes.

“Which makes you the _best_ member,” he made as if to nudge her chin with his knuckles, but she slapped his hand away with a good-natured glare.

Watching their antics, seated behind her desk, Peggy shook her head and set her attention back to the document in her hands, “And when do I get to see the fruits of your labour, hmm?”

“You can’t just rush art, Peg,” Howard whined, standing safely just outside the door of her office.

“I can’t, but SHIELD’s budget can.”

“I am SHIELD’s budget!” he pointed out.

“You are half of SHIELD’s budget,” Peggy corrected him, turning to a new page of the dossier, “The other half is government subsidised.”

“Let me handle this,” Angie whispered aside to Howard, before turning a full mega-watt smile on Peggy, “It’s a surprise. And I’ll showcase it at the apartment when it’s finished next week.” She even threw in a suggestive little eyebrow waggle.

Oh, now that just wasn’t fair.

“Fine,” Peggy huffed, then jabbed a finger at Howard, “but you still owe me a CAPEX report for this Robotics Program. And no backtalk! We’re doing this by the books!”

At that Howard grumbled and sulked, “C’mon, Angie,” he tugged at Angie’s sleeve, “Let’s leave Colonel Grumpypants to her boring paperwork.”

“That’s _Director_ Grumpypants, if you please,” Peggy shot back.

Which brought Peggy to now, a week since that announcement, waiting in the lounge for Angie to emerge from their bedroom. The culmination of events, the loose threads, the way Angie still woke during some nights in a cold sweat – all of it set Peggy’s teeth on edge.

“Ta-da!”

Peggy’s head jerked up. There Angie stood across the room, holding up her skirt on one side to reveal –

\--Well, that certainly wasn’t something you saw every day.

If Peggy had harboured any doubts as to Howard’s selection for the head of his ridiculous Robotics Program, they all flew out the window now.

A sleek metal leg ran seamless down from above the knee, transitioning smoothly from silvery strips to warm pinkish skin. Angie gave a little twirl, posing with one hand on her hip, and the metal leg rippled and flexed like muscle.

“It’s made of that adamantium-vibranium alloy Howard discovered a while back,” Angie explained, sticking her foot out, turning it this way and that, “I could kick a tank over with this thing.”

Peggy’s eyebrows climbed toward her hairline, “Let’s hope you never find yourself in a situation where you need to.”

With a snort, Angie crossed the room, and she didn’t limp or stumble once, “I haven’t even showed you the best part! Look!” She tapped a hidden button just below her thigh, and a compartment jutted out from the leg to reveal a set of wrenches and hex keys.

Peggy gave her a stony glare, but that only made Angie laugh.

“I can dance now too,” she reached down and hauled Peggy to her feet.

“I’m so glad SHIELD’s limited resources are going to a good cause,” Peggy drawled.

She did put her arms around Angie’s waist though.

Grinning, Angie draped her wrists around Peggy’s neck, and they swayed together across the wooden floor, “Just think of all the veterans who would benefit from this level of prosthetic.”

For a few minutes they danced without a hitch, and Peggy was almost starting to relax. That was until Angie put her toes down a little too solidly, at which point a strip of metal at the back of her prosthetic knee slid up, revealing the muzzle of a miniature sub-machine gun that proceeded to demolish the couch Peggy had just been sitting on.

They froze and stared.

Red-faced, Angie admitted sheepishly, “Ok, so maybe there are a few kinks I need to work out before it goes into mass production.”

Shaking her head incredulously, Peggy pulled her in for a kiss.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 3 is forthcoming. Red Room, and Hydra, and Cuban Missile Crisis -- OH MY!


End file.
